Moving On
by mdw
Summary: Beginning after the finale of s.7, this story examines the emotional subtext behind the characters' actions during season 8, and continues with what could have happened after the series ending. R&R.
1. Chapter 1 Broken

Moving On

Disclaimer: The following story is based on characters and plots from _That 70's Show_, copyrighted by the producers of this series. I do not claim to own any of the material derived from the program. This story is not written for any commercial purpose or use. It is meant to be posted on the fanfiction website to be read gratis by other fans of the program.

Note: I wrote this to explore what Hyde may have experienced during the time that he was in Chicago and Vegas.

Moving On, Part I

Chapter 1 "Broken"

Kelso walked into the hotel room wearing only a towel. "No one can see us doing it from the parking lot."

Hyde snapped off Kelso's towel and shut him out of the room. Hyde stared at Jackie with a look of shock and hurt for what felt like forever. Her eyes were big. She was speechless. He turned his back on her and walked out the door.

Hyde puked in the parking lot on the way to his truck. In the periphery, he could see a naked Kelso frantically running about the motel, pounding on doors, terrified that Hyde would beat him up.

Hyde pulled out of the motel parking lot and drove down the highway; he didn't know for how long. He parked over on the side of the road.

He felt as though he had been gutted and he couldn't get that image of Jackie in her slip and Kelso wearing only a towel out of his mind.

Hyde could remember crying only two times in his life, when his father walked out on him when he was 8. And when he was 12 after one of his mother's boyfriends, "Uncle" Frank, beat him to a bloody mess and booted him out the door. Both times he was alone.

This was the third time. Bent over the steering wheel, chest heaving, his body was racked with dry sobs. It wasn't until he crumpled over onto the front seat that the tears flowed. His head throbbed. He was dizzy. He stayed like this for how long he didn't know. At some point he fell asleep.

The ring he had bought for her fell out of his pocket, and rolled under the seat.


	2. Chapter 2 Falling Off the Map

Moving On, Part I

Chapter 2 "Falling Off the Map"

Hyde woke up in his truck feeling like crap. This was worse than any hang-over he'd ever had. He didn't know what time it was.

First things first. Hyde stopped at a coffee shop; drank a lot of coffee, ate some scrambled eggs and toast; and thought about what to do next.

There was no way that he was going to back to Point Place. At least not right away. Explaining what had happened in Chicago was impossible to him. He didn't want to disappoint Mrs. Forman. She'd probably already decorated the house with streamers. Also, she'd want to talk about it. At the breakfast table. Fez most likely would cry and then coo, "Oh, Hyde! Your love life is really a mess." Yeah. It certainly was.

They probably already knew. Kelso most likely rushed home, and told them all. He chuckled at the thought of Kelso hitching a ride home butt-naked. Jackie might have called Donna right after he'd left. She might have even driven home to try to explain things to him, or try to get him back. And there was no way that was going happen.

He hated pity. Humiliation was even worse. It was unbearable to him. Point Place was a small town, and everybody knew everyone else's business.

What he needed was to clear his head. Go somewhere. Think things through.

It once was said that if you could shake the continental United States like you would a map, everyone who had nothing to tie them down would fall west. To Los Angeles. L.A. had no appeal to Hyde. He'd head to Vegas instead. 


	3. Chapter 3 Oasis

Moving On, Part I

Chapter 3 "Oasis"

He arrived in Las Vegas stinking, and parched. He had driven from Chicago without stopping except for gas. Straight away he checked himself into the Sands Hotel. He washed away all the grime and then lay himself down under the crisp white sheets.

Hyde slept like the dead. He had no dreams. After three days, he awoke, revived and renewed.

The first thing he did, apart from buying clean clothes, was to dig out the ring and sell it. Working for W.B. the past year had taught him a lot. He was able to negotiate a good price for the ring, and sell it at profit. He wired money back to the jewelry store in Point Place, and repaid his debt in full. And, he had enough money left over to pay for his time in Las Vegas.

Hyde had always been a wild child. That was until the last couple of years when he'd taken on more responsibility in his personal and professional life. He had become more mature. That didn't mean that he abstained from having a good time with his friends. It just meant he was more subdued and had greater self-control. Kind of like Forman, although not such a pansy-ass. Had he found himself in Las Vegas with money to spend three or more years ago, it would have been hookers, hookers, hookers. Heavy drinking, gambling, and then more hookers.

As it was, gambling held little appeal. He had grown up poor and he wasn't one to throw away his money. After feeling like shit for the last week, he didn't want to drink himself into a blind stupor. He'd already been enough of an ass.

As for women, sluts were really more to his liking rather than prostitutes. He did, however, respect an honest prostitute over a whore.


	4. Chapter 4 Different Meanings

Moving On, Part I

Chapter 4 "Definitions"

Steven Hyde did not have a conventional view of women, at least as far as he thought. He was not one to divide women into the stereotypical categories of Madonna and Whore, or "good girls" and "bad girls." In small towns, this was the generally held opinion.

The 1970's brought some variegation to this way of thinking. "Good girls" did have sex, (or could now admit it openly), but "good girls" had few partners and it was always within an established, committed relationship. Also, they did not have many partners, usually no more than two before marriage. Girls he knew, like Jackie and Donna, were "good girls."

Girls like Pam Macy and the girls he dated were "bad girls." He did not hold with this opinion. In the same judgmental way that people viewed him as a trashy burn-out, because he was poor with no father and a drunken mother, girls who were loose were considered nothing more than sluts and whores.

Truth be told, he was a slut himself, and could enjoy sex without guilt for its purely physical pleasures. He'd had lots of partners and a lot of experience.

A prostitute was simply a professional slut.

A whore was an entirely different creature, and he did not respect a whore. A whore was a parasite who used sex to get whatever it was she wanted. A whore was someone who would sleep with another no matter whom it might hurt, as long as she could advance her own agenda.

His mother was a whore. Laurie Forman was a whore. Pam Burkhart, Jackie's mother, was a whore, and a tacky one at that.

In truth, Pam Burkhart wasn't Jackie's mom. She was Jack Burkhart's third wife, Jackie's mother having died when she was young and her first step-mother having left her father after a couple years of marriage. Kelso was such a moron that he believed Pam to be Jackie's real mother, despite the fact that she was an Amazon and looked nothing like Jackie, and despite that Kelso had met Jackie's first step-mother, a blond real estate agent, many times when the two first dated. Yet another instance when Kelso was made to wear the Stupid Helmut.

That the girlfriend Hyde had ever truly and deeply loved was a "good girl" belied Hyde's notion of himself as an iconoclast. In this, he was not aware.

None of this mattered anyways, because the moment he saw Jackie with Kelso, as far as he was concerned, she was a whore.


	5. Chapter 5 Love and Distractions

Moving On, Part I

Chapter 5 "Love and Distractions"

In many love stories and fairy tales, it is the second love which proves the deeper. The first partner values the hero or heroine as an object for more shallow reasons: money, status, physical beauty, or even safety. The second lover knows the hero and loves him for himself alone. In life this happens too. The second marriage is many times the happier one. Both partners know themselves, and know what they need to be happy.

Jackie's favorite fairy tale, "Beauty and the Beast" fell into this mold. This story differed from her other favorite fantasy "Cinderella," which appealed to that immature and self-centered part of her that like to see herself as a modern-day princess, universally desired by men and envied by women. In contrast, in "Beauty and the Beast," the heroine Beauty is enamored by all the rich, handsome suitors who vie for her hand in marriage. It is only when she uncovers the true beauty of the Beast that she finds true love. The hero or heroine uncovers the deeper nature of the beloved. In loving the other as such, he becomes a real prince, and she, a princess.

Many times, he remembered, after they first discovered that they were in love, he would be alone with her in bed, and, surprisingly, (or "sickeningly," as he would tell her while smirking), her non-stop chatter would sound endearing to him, like the purring of a kitten. She would go on and on, and on and on, not getting or wanting any input from him, and compare their love story to those of her favorite romances. Of course, she would always stipulate at the end, after an exhaustively detailed description of their wedding, that their happy ending wouldn't occur until he was rich and could give her the "castle" and "servants" she desired.

To this, Hyde would mockingly roll his eyes. Then he would say to her, "Okay, now it's time for me to get my happy ending, and, hey, if you want to call me Beast, I can get into that." She would then swat him on the chest, looking mildly annoyed, and things would go on from there.

Hyde was a realist. He was under no illusion that his relationship with Samantha, a girl he hung out with in Las Vegas, was anything more than a rebound. She was not going to be that great second love from popular romances. She was a distraction.

That didn't mean, however, that he didn't like and respect her. He enjoyed hanging out with her. She was pretty, and they had fun together. He respected her too. Like him, she had overcome many hardships in life for someone so young. She had made her own way in the world.

He also admired Sam's dedication to her chosen career. Before he went to Vegas, he had no idea of the rigorous work that a professional stripper did to prepare. There were hours of dance class, work with choreographers, rehearsals, and fittings. Then there were the shows themselves.

In the gentlemen's clubs near home, a stripper generally performed on a small stage in a dank, sleazy bar. She didn't have much in the way of dance training, and she would also do lap dances for tips. Basically, she was one-step away from being a cheap prostitute.

In Las Vegas, there were many types of shows. In fact, there was something of a career ladder for ambitious showgirls. Work could be found in the cheap, sleazy places. There were also mid-level venues in the smaller casinos or moderately priced convention halls. There were also bright, glittery spectacles costing significant sums of money to produce.

Sam performed in the mid-level shows. She choreographed most of her own routines and made up her costumes. She wasn't particularly ambitious, but she did dream that one day she would dance at The Lido or The Moulin Rouge in Paris.

The best thing about Sam was that when he was with her, he got a break from thinking about Jackie and their failed relationship. And he figured that if he were to be in a rebound, who better to be with than a tanned, shapely blond with years of experience and professional expertise in taking off her clothes.

Hyde did enjoy his time in Vegas. He went out on the Strip with Sam and her friends at night, and spent the days alone by the hotel poolside. He used this time to reflect.


	6. Chapter 6 Reflections

Moving On, Part I

Chapter 6 "Reflections"

When Hyde remembered Jackie crying at that Packers game, his heart broke. He wanted to go to her and comfort her, but he knew that doing so would complicate things given that she wanted to move on. So, he sent Donna to her. After the game when they got home, they'd agreed that it was probably better if they didn't spend so much time together. He offered to walk her home. She said, "No, it's okay." He followed her anyways. He kept a distance, until he knew she was safe in her house.

He felt sad about their break up that year. He liked to think of himself as a stand up guy. And he couldn't tell her what she wanted to hear unless he knew he meant it. He didn't know. He wasn't like Kelso who'd tell a woman anything so she would get off his case. And he wasn't like Forman who had backed out on a promise.

Marriage terrified him. And not for the typical reasons many young men had. Essentially, his hesitation, o.k., paralysis, when it came to taking the next step in the relationship, came out of his past hurts and scars.

His own parents' marriage and the concomitant fear of becoming like either of them were scary enough. Part of him held himself back from completely trusting another person in any relationship. It was threatening.

He had been neglected, rejected, and abandoned too many times when he was very young by those who ought to have loved him best. In many ways he had lived through the worst that can happen to a child. It made him tough and self-reliant. It created a lot of rage. Sadly, it also kept him from letting himself get too close to other people.

It wasn't until Kitty and Red took him in when he and Eric first became friends at six that he had known any adults he could depend on. Even though he didn't move into the Forman home until his mother had taken off with some trucker, Red and Kitty more or less parented him from an early age.

When Jackie started to freak out this year about a future together, he slammed on the brakes. He needed to be on his own timeline. And he needed her to accept this. He still would have needed pressure from her and encouragement from the Formans to get him to go where they both wanted to be.

The pressure that she began to apply became too intense for him. Unbearable even. The more she tried to enforce her will, to control him, force him, threaten him, manipulate him, dominate him, the more he pulled away. When she gave him that last ultimatum, he resented it. He became even angrier and more petulant when he got her note. The time she next came to the basement after supposedly having left, he no longer believed that she had any intention of going to Chicago. He doubted there was even a job. He convinced himself that the whole thing was another manipulation of hers. He was pissed. He was sick of the whole thing. And so the last time they spoke, he didn't respond to her, and treated her with callousness.

And that was where things stood until he realized she meant it when she said she was leaving. He then knew that he wanted her to be with him. And then there was Chicago. And it was over.


	7. Chapter 7 Return

Moving On, Part I

Chapter 7 "Return"

Hyde knew it was about time to go home once he had gotten perspective on his life and his breakup with Jackie. And once he could think about her and the time they were together without feeling much of anything. He knew he had been right all along. He wasn't ready. He wasn't ready to get married yet.

When he first arrived in Vegas, he was wracked with extreme emotional pain. A part of him was destroyed. He handled this loss the same way he had dealt with all the other losses in his life. He ran away, stuffed his feelings deep inside, and moved on with his life. That he ran so far away, basically across the country, to a place with endless entertainments and women to distract one, and that he stayed away for so long indicated how painful the loss of Jackie was, and how essential she had been to him. Time and distance would prove the only way to cauterize the wound.

Spending time in Vegas was a good choice, he thought, and so was hanging out with Sam. If Las Vegas was as different from Wisconsin as could be, so was Sam from Jackie. She was a California blond of normal adult height. Her voice was never whiny or abrasive, although he wouldn't describe it as mellifluous either. Sam didn't insult people as a natural reflex like breathing. Of course, she wasn't perceptive enough and didn't have the wit for a good verbal spar. Most importantly, she did not exasperate him in every possible way. She didn't leave much of impression at all.

As the days passed, he began to recover himself. He was tough and resilient. He was a man. He would never be that fruity loser who would sit around moaning in self-pity, moping and wallowing in his tears. First he regained his sense of humor, and then his ability to appear unaffected, as though nothing bothered him. He was cool. He was aloof. Even if it was just a mask, it had always worked before. "Whatever."

Feeling better more and more, he began to party more and more wildly. Bar hopping and nights of endless partying put everything that happened in Chicago to rest. On a couple nights or more, he had drunk so much and had gotten so wasted that he couldn't remember where he'd been or what he'd done after 2 a.m.

He realized it was time to return when he began to notice things that reminded him of home, of her, and it no longer hurt. First, he gasped in horror one night, when out on the strip with Sam and her friends, he looked up to see a giant billboard with Bob Pinciotti smiling down at him from the sky. He breathed a sigh of relief and decided he had had enough tequila shots for the night once he realized the billboard was just an ad for a Tom Jones concert. The next day, while reading the local paper, he caught a headline that read, "Prosecutor to use the "Unicorn Defense." What the hell? Reading into the article he learned that the "Unicorn Defense" was a slang term used by prosecutors when a defendant blames some mythical person for a crime. He chalked up another point for no longer having Jackie in his life. No more stupid unicorns.

The last thing he saw that reminded him of her before he decided it was time to go home was a show with a burlesque strip tease. The strippers looked just like Donna and Jackie. Crap, the routine could have come from one of Kelso's vividly described fantasies. Well, Jackie was hot, even if she were a bitch and a whore.

He checked out of the hotel the next day, and said goodbye to Sam. He gave her his number and address in case she ever was in Wisconsin. He didn't really see this happening. He bought some gifts for the people back home. And, he got on the road.

A few evenings before he arrived in Point Place, he called Red and W.B. Hyde had been right. Everyone knew what happened. He apologized to Red for not calling earlier. Red understood, and said that he would handle Kitty. Between his disappearance and Eric's departure, Kitty had been a crying lunatic. Red tried to brush aside any guilt that Hyde might feel by adding that Kitty cheered up once they'd heard from Eric, and she knew that he hadn't contracted malaria or been eaten by some carnivore on the African savannah. Until Eric's call, Red told Steven, she took no solace from Red's reassurance that no animal would want to eat Eric for a meal. "He's too skinny . . .and twitchy. He give them nervous indigestion."

W.B. was similarly sympathetic. Hyde worried on the drive back that he would no longer have a job, after taking off and leaving the store unattended for a month.

"I kind of left Leo in charge," Hyde said.

W.B. response wasn't entirely reassuring. "mmm….yeah. Well whatever you find when you get back, Steven, I'm here for you. And once you're back in the routine, I'll take you out for drinks, and tell you about some of the women who have made me what I am today: single."

"I hear you," Hyde grinned.

He'd have to decide what to say to Kelso and Jackie the next time he saw either one of them. With Kelso, it was easy. He'd kick his ass. He wasn't as sure what he would say to Jackie. They were over, and that's how it would stay. There would never be a repeat of those feelings of his that she had taken so lightly and forgotten so fast.

Lucky for him, Jackie was living in Chicago, and he wouldn't have to see her for awhile. Not until he was ready. Sure, there would be a hole in his life, just as there would be with Forman gone. But that's cool. He'd get on with it.


	8. Chapter 8 Caught

Moving On, Part II

Chapter One "Caught"

Steven just stared at her, and left.

Eyes open wide, her face frozen, Jackie stood there immobile. Then reality hit.

"Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my God!" A brief pause. "Oh my God!" she groaned.

"What just happened? What did I do? What did he see?"

"Nothing. I did nothing. I mean, Steven thinks he saw something, but he's wrong. Nothing happened."

She put her hands over face. "Okay. Just breathe, Jackie. Just breathe. Think."

She leaned over the balcony, and saw Steven stalking to his truck.

She yelled as loud as she could, "Steven!" She ran down the stairs, barefoot, wearing just her gown, and shouting, "Steven!" He didn't look back. "Michael! Michael! Go get Steven! Michael! Don't let him get away!" Michael was useless. He was running all over the place – naked - looking for anyone who would hide him. She ran towards the El Camino. "Steven! . . . Steven! . . . Don't leave! . . . Please! Don't go!" she screamed as he pealed out of the parking lot in fury. She caught her breath, calling out his name, and then at last, she whimpered softly, "Steven."

She was still stunned. Once in her room, she sat on her bed, and tried to get her head together to form a thought. She knew Michael wasn't going to come back. Just in case though, she threw his clothes out the door, and bolted it shut.

First thing to do was to call Donna. Donna would explain everything to Steven as soon as he got home. Bob answered the phone. "Oh, hiya, Jackie. No, Donna's not here. She's still with Eric at the airport."

"Mr. Pinciotti, can you have Donna call me the second she gets home? No matter what time it is. It's really important," she spoke with urgency and increasing panic.

"Is everything alright, sweetie?" Bob asks.

"Huh? Please just ask her to call me."

Then she called the Formans. As soon as Mrs. Forman answered the phone, Jackie blurted out, "Mrs.Forman,somethinghappened, Stevenhastocallme"

Mrs. Forman had her repeat this more slowly, telling her to calm down and take a deep breath. "Jackie, tell me what happened. Are you alright? Is Steven okay? Tell me what's going on," Mrs. Forman directed her with assurance.

"I can't talk about it. Steven got here, and he thinks something happened and he left but nothing happened and please just ask him call me."

Jackie then curled into fetal position on top of the sheets. She hugged her knees to her chest, and began to reassure herself. "It's going to be fine. It'll be fine. Steven will call, and I'll explain, and we'll work things out. I mean, he came here for me. He still loves me. It's all going to be fine, as soon as I explain that nothing happened between me and Michael. Nothing. And that's the truth, because nothing had happened yet."


	9. Chapter 9 Where's Steven?

Moving On Part II,

Chapter 2 "Where's Steven?"

Jackie slept fitfully and not long enough. Most of the night, she was awake feeling sick with anxiety. Her thoughts ran through her head over and over like a mantra. "It's going to be alright. I'll patch things up with Steven tomorrow. I'll drive home first thing in the morning. He and I will talk, and it will all work out. We'll get back together. I'll move back home. It's going to be fine."

At 4:30 she called Donna. She let the phone ring twenty or so times before hanging up. She waited 20 minutes, and dialed again. Bob answered on the fifth ring. "Jackie, do you know what time it is? Donna's still sleeping. Call back in about 3 hours, honey."

Jackie commanded, "Mr. Pinciotti, I have to talk to Donna now."

After ten minutes a sleepy Donna said into the phone, "Jackie, it's five in the morning! This had better be important, and not about something like the shoes you forgot to pack. Eric's plane -"

"Listen, Donna. Shut up." Jackie interrupted. "Steven came to see me at my hotel last night, and, before we could really say anything, Michael came into the room. And he was only wearing a towel."

"What?" Donna was alert by now.

"So, Michael comes in and, you know how he talks so loud. Well, he's going on about how no one can see us doing it from the parking lot. And Steven…" "Oh God!" she groaned.

"Wait a minute. Why was Kelso at the hotel? And why was he walking around in a towel?'

"Well," gulped Jackie. "I was feeling really lonely, and Michael was there. And . . . but nothing happened."

"What did Hyde do?"

"He just stood there looking at me. And I've never seen him look like that. At least not at me. And then he just left."

"Oh. Jackie. I'm sorry."

"Donna. I have to talk to him. Can you go over there and get him for me?"

"Jackie, it's not even 5. I'll go over in a couple of hours and I'll have Hyde call you. Don't worry."

But Steven didn't call at 7. He wasn't home yet. Nor was he at 8. Or at any of the other ten times Jackie called to check. Finally, Mrs. Forman and Donna both promised her that they would call her the minute Steven arrived.

By 8 o'clock in the morning, everyone knew what had happened. Michael told them.

Kelso told them as soon as he put some clothes on.

He waited to go over to the Forman house until he was sure that Hyde wasn't home. Kelso thought he could run home as soon as he heard Hyde's car pull up on the street. Also, he figured, if he could get away when he was naked in Chicago, he could do it at home too. Only better. Because this time he knew where all the good hiding spots were. And, he was wearing clothes.

Kelso told everyone how Jackie made him stay with her in Chicago, how they had been making out, how he got naked and they were about to do it, but Jackie was thirsty. So he went to get some water and some ice, and he was wearing just a towel, how Hyde saw him and took his towel.

And then Hyde left when Kelso was running for shelter. Of course, he got a ride home because he was naked and he's sweet-looking. After all, who wouldn't want to sit next to this, he said gesturing towards himself with pride.

Everyone was sitting at or standing around the kitchen table. Red and Mrs. Forman and Donna and Fez, they just listened, silently looking at each other with pursed lips and eyebrows raised.

Red interrupted a couple of times, "You did what!?!"

When Kelso finished his story, Mrs. Forman said, "Okay. So, Steven had a bit of a shock. Where would he go?" Then she walked to the counter, and added, "Does anyone else need a drink?"


	10. Chapter 10 Waiting

Moving On, Part II

Chapter 10 "Waiting"

Jackie continued to check in with Donna at least three times a day to see if Steven had come home. She called in the morning, when she returned home from her job, and right before bed. Always, Donna's response was, no, Hyde had not returned yet. No one had heard anything from him, and no one knew where he was. It was as if Steven had dropped off the map.

As the days became weeks, Jackie became more and more worried, and it began to dawn on her that this would a bigger rift to heal than anything they had undergone before.

Each night she slept less and less. Her appetite decreased to the point that she could barely hold down any food. It was hard to concentrate at work, and her performance suffered. She began to vomit numerous times per day.

After two weeks of this, it occurred to her that she might be pregnant. Her period was three weeks late. Even though she and Steven practiced birth control, there was always a slight risk. A part of her wished that she was pregnant, because then, when Steven came back, they would have to patch things up, and get back together, and marry. Even though Steven could be such a jerk sometimes, he had integrity, and she knew that he would never leave her in the lurch.

She even joked to Donna on that last night when she was waiting for Steven's answer to her ultimatum that she had considered using a fake pregnancy to get a marriage proposal. She was only partly joking, because she wanted him to commit so badly and to tell her that they would have a future together that she had become, well, desperate.

But, the stick didn't turn blue. Jackie's doctor had told her that she was just sick from anxiety and lack of sleep.

Donna had been emphatic that this was a good thing. If a couple had serious differences of opinion about their future together as Jackie and Hyde did, Donna said, a pregnancy and a child would only make the relationship worse.

Donna knew this from her own life experience. Her mother Midge had become accidentally pregnant when she and Bob were in high school, and they had had a shotgun wedding. As soon as Donna was older and no longer dependent on her mother, the strain of the Pinciotti's unhappy marriage became too much for Midge. She and Bob began to experiment with a number of '70s fads, like wife swapping and nudism, and ultimately divorced. Midge left Bob and abandoned Donna, as she was so unhappy, having never known who she was and having lived for years with Bob's patronizing disregard for her.

Jackie grudgingly agreed with Donna. She didn't want Steven to marry her out of obligation, and to later hold her in contempt. It was just that she so ardently wanted to be a wife and mother. It had been the only thing she had ever truly desired. Her dreams of being a weather girl or a talk show host paled in comparison to those of running her own household and being the wife of the man she loved. Why couldn't Steven tell her that he wanted to share his life with her? Last year she felt sure that he would come around. He had told her how beautiful she was when he saw her in that wedding dress when she and Eric were shopping to register for Donna and Eric's wedding.

Donna assured her, time and time again, that Steven would do the right thing, but he didn't. Instead of responding to her ultimatum as she wanted him to, Steven was passed out drunk in some kind of beer where house where, according to Eric, all of the guys had been that night drinking heavily. What the hell was with Steven? Had he ever loved her at all? Didn't he know how scared she was that he would reject her?

Even Eric, who Jackie thought was totally lame and did not deserve to have a girlfriend like Donna, especially after all the crap he had put Donna through with the wedding and Africa, had come over to the Pinciotti's house, because he was worried that Donna had gone on a date with someone else.

Jackie felt that she had put herself out there with Steven and risked everything, and that Steven had rejected her in the most hurtful way possible. She had enough pride that she wasn't going to wait around for him to reject her to her face. So, she left a note for Mrs. Forman to give to Steven to inform him that she had already left for Chicago.

What she didn't know was that, while drunk, Steven had alternated between telling his friends, while drunk that he was going to be "Mr. Jackie Burkhart." He alternated this declaration by expressing his resentment that she had given an ultimatum to propose in the first place. She never knew that he had planned to tell her that he wanted a future with her as his wife, even though he waited until the clock had just about run out.

Had she known these things, she wouldn't be in Chicago right now, lonely and sick with anxiety. All that she had heard directly from Steven's mouth was that he didn't believe that she was leaving. He said this, while looking totally impassive, like he did not love her at all. All she saw was his coldness and resentment.

Her only thoughts at this time were, "God! I just want to know that he's alright. I just want to work things out." Because she knew in her heart that he wouldn't have come to see her in Chicago unless he had something meaningful to say. "God damn Michael, and my own weakness and fear of being alone!" she thought.

Finally, after nearly a month of waiting on pins and needles, Donna finally told her what she had been waiting to hear. Steven had called Red, and he would be home in three days. She gave notice at work, and made her preparations to go home. And she knew that once she and Steven saw each other and she had explained things to him that everything would be back to normal.


	11. Chapter 11 Alternate Universe

Moving On, Part II

Chapter 10 "Alternate Universe"

In order to understand events that transpired soon after Jackie and Hyde encountered each other again, it is important to look back and then to skip ahead a bit in this story. Because, how this tightly knit community, or family, made up of the Formans, the Pinciottis, Hyde, Jackie, Kelso, and Fez, appeared to think and feel, how they behaved, was so different from the recent past, it seemed as if this were an alternate universe. But, it wasn't.

Kitty Forman took to her bed one week after Eric left and after all of them heard Kelso's story. During that week, she was able to stay so busy that she was able to put any troubling thoughts, or painful feelings, away.

Kitty had always loved to bake, and there was always someone hanging around her kitchen who loved to eat the brownies, cookies, muffins, and cheese puffs she made with her extra special ingredient, love, added in. So, when she started to bake and cook after Eric and Hyde had gone, it didn't seem out of the ordinary. That is until her kitchen began to look like the kitchen of a large restaurant with capacity enough to feed the multitudes, especially if the multitudes had a big sweet tooth. Every inch of countertop, the kitchen table, had stacks of her dishes.

Once she started to fill up the surfaces in the living room, Red put his foot down. He gave her a couple of her little yellow pills, and had her lie down in bed. She didn't leave her bedroom for two weeks, she was so upset.

Kitty started to think and wonder about all the changes of the past year. First, Fez and Laurie had a sham wedding so that Fez could stay in the country; then Red had a heart attack; then Eric left Donna at the alter; then Eric spent a whole year doing nothing but chasing butterflies figuratively and, sadly, literally; then Jackie moved to Chicago where she and Michael were caught in a tryst; Steven disappeared entirely; and last her precious baby boy left for a year to teach in Africa. Her heart truly broke when she thought about Steven and Eric. She had no one to take care of, and she didn't know the whereabouts of any of her children, not even Laurie who was somewhere in Canada.

There were other things too. When Laurie came back from her honeymoon which she spent with her "friend" Carlos while Fez stayed at home, she was a different person. And it wasn't just how she acted. She looked like another woman. She was taller. Her eyes were brown, instead of blue. Her voice took on a lower pitch. She had less energy. Kitty asked herself had she ever really known her daughter at all.

Red opened his own business, and spent all of Eric's college tuition. Red had never been the type of man to risk his life savings on a risky venture. And, he had always been very responsible, and, although he rode Eric, Red wanted the best future possible for his son which included college. Red even started dying his hair this deep shade of red, which, Jackie, in her characteristically shallow, critical way, said, made him look like a clown. Fortunately, Jackie didn't say this while Red was home. Kitty did have to agree with her about Red's hair.

In an even more surprising development that could have come out of fiction, Kitty discovered that Steven had an unknown biological father, who was rich and black. Steven went from pauper to prince, and his hair magically changed into the color and texture of a black man. At least, Steven still wore his sunglass all the time. Kitty preferred that he take them off, because his blue eyes were very pretty. But, she did appreciate the consistency.

Eric, too, seemed strangely different. He abandoned Donna the night before their wedding was to take place which was on her birthday. Kitty never would have imagined in a million years that Eric, her gentle and thoughtful son would have done such a heartless thing to the girl he had loved his entire life. Kitty could have seen Laurie doing this, but not Eric. Kitty still adored Eric, but she couldn't deny that he began to act, well, stupid. When he went to a Packers game with Red and all the kids, he wore another team's jersey and got into a fight with some guy in the stands, which he said he won because he trained himself to fight using Spiderman comics. Eric's love of Star Wars, action figures, and comic books took on a perverse, even a deviant, intensity. At least that's what Red said. And she agreed. Even Eric's hair took on a stiff, unreal quality, as though were wearing a wig. Worst of all, Eric chose to leave home and to go, of all places, to Africa. Eric had always been afraid of the unknown, not to mention large bugs and predatory animals. Kitty worried that Eric could die in Africa, or even worse, that he would marry some slutty girl whom he met there and never return home.

At least Kelso and Fez stayed the same. Both boys were still very immature, almost child-like. Kelso was still a kettlehead, and Fez, a pervert, a pervert who wore his pants and shirts too tight. Donna was, more or less, the same. Jackie, too, stayed consistent, except that she all of a sudden wanted a career, badly enough to move to Chicago, and that she had gotten together with Michael, after just leaving home and Steven, for a week.

How had all these unbelievable things come to pass? Kitty thought maybe the kids had too many choices, too much freedom. She didn't know. She also did not know yet that even odder things would occur during the rest of the year. Sometimes, ignorance is best.

Red was very sweet while Kitty was so upset. Like he always did when needed, he took care of her. Kitty finally emerged once Red had news from Eric, and she knew that he was safe, and once Red told her that Steven had spent all this time in Las Vegas to clear his head, and that he would be home in three days. Donna told Kitty that Jackie planned to move back home to work everything out with Steven. She planned to arrive on the day Steven did. Kitty was unsure how that would go. She was also a little worried.


	12. Chapter 12 Welcome Back

Moving On Part III

Chapter 12 "Welcome Back"

Author Note: Part III of the story sticks to what happens in season 8. The focus is still on Jackie and Hyde's story. It does include other characters' perspectives. I'm trying to interpret what happens in a way that makes dramatic sense. I'm going to add some things that the characters say and do beyond what we see on t.v., if I think they stay true to the story. Any contradictions with things explicitly shown or stated are unintentional. The chapters aren't going to correlate to each episode.

With regard to whether or not Jackie slept with Kelso, although not explicitly stated, I think that Jackie and Kelso's dialogue reveals that they would have had sex had Hyde not shown up when he did. I think that the writers made this choice because there's a double standard. Had it been revealed that Jackie slept with Kelso, her character would have been seriously damaged. The way Kelso and Hyde are written and judged with regard to sexual behavior is treated very differently from the way Laurie and Pam Burkhart are.

On the day Steven Hyde was to return home, Michael Kelso walked around in a heightened state of alarm. He knew that at any moment Hyde might appear to give him a serious thrashing. Hyde was tough and could be violent, and Kelso had given Hyde good reason to attack him. So, when he opened the door to go home and found himself under attack, he was relieved that the flurry of hits he received came from the tiny fists of Jackie Burkhart.

Jackie was enraged, and Michael was the target of her anger. Fez and Donna were a little surprised to see her, but understood the reasons behind her decision to give up her job and move back home. Typically stupid, Kelso wondered if Jackie meant to get back together with him. Jackie's response was an emphatic "NO!" followed by, "God! You are as dumb as ever!"

Jackie felt anxious and relieved all at once. She was nervous about Steven's initial reaction when he saw her. She knew that he would be angry and hurt. How would she get him to move past these emotions? After a month of waiting with no word from or about him, she was relieved that this moment had finally come. She was eager to get Steven to talk to her about their relationship, and for them to reconcile. She had given up her dream job for him, and she had confidence that the two of them would pick up where they left off before she moved to Chicago. She waited for him in the basement and watched television. That Jackie sincerely believed that she and Steven would soon reunite indicated how deluded her thinking was.

When Hyde walked into the living room, he was greeted with excitement and warmth. Ecstatic, Mrs. Forman wouldn't stop hugging him, until an equally excited Fez pulled her off so that he could embrace Hyde. Both expressed how worried his disappearance had made them. Donna was equally happy to see her missing friend.

Hyde, then, encountered a not-so-enthusiastic Kelso. Kelso was surprised to see Hyde and understandably nervous. How Hyde confronted Kelso was much less painful than Kelso feared. Hyde decided that he would communicate his feelings to Kelso in a way that both guys could understand and accept. One knockdown punch to the face would say everything. After that, Hyde was over it. All was forgiven, if never forgotten.

Forgiving Kelso was much easier than forgiving Jackie. Hyde and Kelso had been friends almost as long as either could remember. He had never depended on Kelso to make him feel happy and complete. He had been deeply in love with Jackie and had wanted to make her his wife. Part of Hyde maybe still felt a glimmer of guilt for having stolen Jackie from Kelso in the first place.

It was also easier to forgive Kelso, because Kelso was just so stupid. There was no getting around it. Everyone who knew Michael Kelso accepted the fact that he had sub-normal intelligence. On a number of occasions Mrs. Forman, who first would point out her authority on health issues as a nurse, hypothesized that Michael was mildly retarded. No one could really disagree. Kelso lacked the intelligence to make sound moral decisions. It was after the wreckage caused by his sexual exploits that he might express remorse or try to make amends. For the most part, he gloated about his conquests. Kelso constantly hit on every woman he encountered, attached or single, and including his female friends. When he wasn't propositioning women, Kelso would say incredibly inappropriate things as a reflex. Several times, he had told Eric with sincerity how he could see kissing Eric's mother, because she was so spunky. Kelso saw this as a compliment, and didn't really notice Eric cringing.

When Jackie approached Hyde after Kelso left the room, it was entirely different. She was not forgiven. Nor would Hyde talk to her, except to say they no longer had a relationship, because she screwed Kelso. Jackie did tell him that she and Michael didn't have sex, but to no avail. He told her that he had nothing to say, turned his back on her, and left the room. She went home heartbroken, saying, "Well, I guess that's it."

From Hyde's perspective, he was not expecting to see Jackie that day, nor did he want to. When she came into the room, he had to brace himself to talk to her. He treated her with scorn, and didn't believe her when she said that she and Kelso hadn't slept together. Whether or not she and Kelso had yet had intercourse at the moment he knocked on her door was not truly relevant. Upon seeing Kelso naked but for the towel, he knew that either they had already slept together or that they would have, had he shown up later or not arrived at all. Her betrayal was the same.

No matter what might happen in the future or how things might change between them, there was nothing Jackie could have said at that moment that would have made any difference to Hyde. He and Jackie were over. He no longer loved her. And his resolve and feelings were implacable.


	13. Chapter 13 Surprise!

Moving On, Part III,

Chapter 13 "Surprise!"

Jackie Burkhart walked into the Forman living room briskly with renewed hope. She had just spent the last three hours lying on Donna's bed, forlorn, furious, and crying. When Donna came into her bedroom a half hour after Jackie left the Formans, Donna was carrying a box, a box of all the things that Jackie had left in Steven's room before she went away. Jackie and Steven never really spent any time together once she decided to leave, and she never had the chance to clear out her things. She didn't go through the box at this time. It was hard enough to know that he had just returned everything. "Well," she thought, "he really doesn't want me in his life anymore." She couldn't believe that Steven wouldn't even give her the time of day after all that they had meant to each other, after everything they'd shared. Maybe, he had never loved her at all, she wondered to Donna. Everything had turned out so differently from how she hoped, even expected, it too. Donna tried to cheer her up.

It was only when Michael told her that Steven had gone to Chicago to ask her to marry him that she smiled and believed that her relationship was in fact going to work out. In the back of her mind, she wondered if Michael had known that Steven was on his way to propose before the two of them had started fooling around. It would have been like him not to say anything until after.

Jackie noticed Steven bracing himself slightly when he saw her return. This time he sat down with her, and was no longer resentful, but resigned. Steven told her that he didn't say anything to her before she left, because he wasn't ready to get married, she understood and accepted this. When he next told her that, after thinking about things, he knew that he wasn't ready to get married yet, Jackie latched onto the word "yet," her voice filled with elation.

If the moment when Steven Hyde had his heart crushed came right after Jackie opened the door to her hotel room in Chicago, Jackie's moment arrived just after Kitty Forman opened her front door to let in a stranger.

Because the stranger, this walking abomination, turned out to be some random slut Steven had been with in Las Vegas, some stripper. And then the Whore revealed that she was Steven's wife, and the levees burst.

"Oh, my God," Jackie said, her heart in her throat. She didn't know if she would make it back to Donna's, because her head was spinning and her body had turned to mush. Jackie barely made it through the door before she collapsed into Donna's arms, sobbing uncontrollably. The pain was excruciating. She had never felt anything like it before. It was some time before she could make even the most halting attempts to tell Donna what had happened. Each time Jackie would start to explain, she would dissolve into tears. It was some time before she cried herself out enough to tell Donna that Steven had gotten married. It took longer still to tell her that he married a stripper.

Jackie spent that night at Donna's house. She was inconsolable. She slept fitfully with no dreams. When she did wake up, she would begin sobbing again. Donna spent the whole time trying to comfort her. She held her, and spoke words of comfort. Michael came in briefly but Jackie barely noticed. He ran over to the Formans as soon as Donna told him about Hyde's wife.

The next day late in the afternoon after Donna left for the Formans to talk to Hyde, Jackie dragged herself home and tried to figure out what to do with the wreckage of her life. She had hit rock bottom. Her heart was broken; her dream, shattered.


	14. Chapter 14 Stripes

Moving On, Part III

Chapter 14, "Stripes"

When Samantha came into the Forman's living room holding her suitcase, and announced that she and Hyde got married in Las Vegas, Hyde's jaw dropped open. He could only think, "What the #?" His brain froze from the shock. He thought he heard Jackie say something in the background.

Once he regained the ability to formulate thoughts, the following ran through his mind was "What? Wait. I got what? Shit! When did that happen? How? Why don't I remember this? Am I dreaming? I've done a lot of stupid things, but …. God, I wish Red were here to put his foot in my ass, and wake me up? This can't be real." He continued with this line of thought until Sam said, "Hyde, honey, are you alright?" She was about to sit next to him on the couch to hold his hand.

However, before she moved an inch, Kitty intervened between the two, helped Hyde to his feet, and guided him into the kitchen. She gave him a nice hot cup of tea, and asked him how he could get married . . .to a stri--…um, an exotic dancer, and not remember a thing about it.

"Why couldn't I have come back with something easy to take care of, like v.d.?" he wondered. At least his sense of humor was coming back..

To Mrs. Forman, he said, "Alcohol is so much more dangerous than wee…not going to sleep on time." Even though Red and Mrs. Forman knew that the gang got high almost daily, and the kids knew that Red and Kitty knew, they all liked to keep up the pretense that they didn't for the sake of denial. They did the same sort of thing when they joked about how Laurie was a whore, and Red and Kitty would pretend not to hear anything.

Hyde had a headache. He arrived home this morning thinking that, after a month away to regain his equilibrium, he was ready to pick things up again. It wasn't going to be so easy. Not only was Jackie not living in Chicago as he'd hoped. She'd moved back to Point Place, stirring up all the emotions he had run away to hide from. And he was married to a woman he didn't care about or even know. He didn't even know her last name. She had taken his. Could it get any worse?

Yes. It could. He found that Leo had let his store turn to pot, just about literally. Hyde with Kelso walked into an opium den filled with hippies smoking from a hookah and copulating all over the place. The store was a sty. His inventory, cash register, everything was gone. The whole place would have to be disinfected, re-stocked, re-staffed. His life was a nightmare that would not end. One good thing - Kelso was beginning to learn the calendar. He was able to connect a holiday, Roshashonah, with the correct month, September. "Well," Hyde said to himself, "if today does mark the start of a new year, as it does in the Jewish religion, this year was going to suck!" Hyde decided he'd take a page from the Chinese calendar and call the final months of 1979 the Year of the Ass.

He came home later, and told Sam the condition he'd found Grooves in. She then said, "Do you know what you did? You just told your wife about your day. That wasn't so bad, was it?"

He replied somewhat apathetically, "I guess it was okay."

Next, he was given an out. Red and Kitty told him that if this wasn't what he wanted, it wasn't too late to make a change. Sam chimed in, "Yeah if you don't want me here, Steven, I'll be on the next plane out." She sounded a little hurt.

Out of inertia, confusion, bewilderment, he didn't know what, he told her to stay.

Late into the night, he was alone in his room, thinking, "Do all women want to trap a man into marrying them? Oh, God! I'm going to have to have my balls chopped off, so she doesn't get pregnant and really nail my coffin shut! I almost wish I were Fez. He'd never be in this kind of Hell. Fez could count the number of women he's had on his thumb. Okay, so maybe I don't wish I were Fez. Shit!"

He'd have to put his life back together. He'd think about it tomorrow.


	15. Chapter 15 The Worst That Could Happen

Moving On, Part III

Chapter 15 "The Worst That Could Happen"

It's very hard to continue writing this. Not only have I not seen 8 of the episodes of s8, but I don't like the ones I have seen. I think Jackie and Hyde were broken up only b/c Topher Grace and Ashton Kutcher were gone, and the exec. producers wanted to change their dynamic to an antagonistic one. This way J. & H. could insult each other. Hyde could act like he did pre-s5, and Jackie revert to being bitchy & shallow. But the characters had grown and changed. All the s.7 episodes about their 2 breakups are so out of the blue. They don't reflect the portrayal or conflicts of the relationship. The main problem w/ s6-8 is none of the characters were allowed to grow up, like real people do. Did the writers purposely or subconsciously want to move on to other jobs, so that they destroyed each character one by one, starting w/ Eric bailing on Donna at their wedding? Anyways, I want to write this part so that I can write another story that begins after the series ending. I hope anyone who's reading this enjoys it well enough.

When Jackie and Hyde awoke the next day, alone in their own beds, in their own rooms, each of them realized that their lives had turned diametrically around. Things were now complicated and could not be easily undone. Suddenly, ironically, unbelievably even, Jackie and Hyde found themselves plopped right into the lives that each had feared most.

Jackie was back in Point Place. Alone. She was back in her pink bedroom. She had no boyfriend. She had no prospects of one. She couldn't possibly be any farther away from the future married life that she envisioned. She had pressured Steven to marry her so much that she lost him.

Further, having quit her job in Chicago barely after she started it, she was no longer was on even the lowest rungs of the career ladder. She didn't have her public access show. She didn't have any job at all. Living in a small town and having only a high school diploma, she didn't have a lot of job choices. She had nowhere to go everyday, nothing that anchored her. If previously she spent her days hanging out at Grooves, listening to music, gossiping, painting her nails, she now found herself drifting.

Steven treated her so strangely, like their relationship had never been serious or meaningful. She could not believe that Steven had gotten married to some random nobody whom he had just met. For her, that was when she knew it was over, and that was when she knew that she was through with him. And she told him as much.

Initially comforting, her friends quickly stopped acting sympathetically, supportive. They showed no sensitivity to her feelings at all. A day ago, Michael told Jackie that she and Steven belonged together. Now he was high fiving Steven, because, he said, the two of them had so screwed her up she had moved on to women. And Michael kept going on and on about Steven's stripper wife. Michael was so excited when he talked about that Stripper Whore that Jackie was sure his head would explode, his brain overstuffed with horny thoughts. Moron. Ass.

She expected more from Fez and Donna, but they also let her down. They quickly ditched her when the three of them went to a club that night, when she needed them to be there for her. Donna invited the Stripper over less than a week later for Girl's Night when the guys were giving Steven a bachelor party. Why did he need a bachelor party anyways? He was already married, and his Whore probably gave him all the adult entertainment he wanted. Donna then expected Jackie to get along with the Slut. Donna might be a tomboy, but didn't she have any insight? There was no way Jackie was ever going to treat Steven's Whore as anything other than trash.

Jackie knew that she would have to rebuild her life. She might even have to reinvent herself.

Hyde, too, was exactly where he didn't want to be. He had a wife. Immediately, after the moment he told Jackie that he wasn't ready to get married yet, he discovered that he had said, "I do" in Las Vegas, when he was so drunk that he had no memory of having wed at all. If less than a month and a half ago, he couldn't indicate to his long-time girlfriend that someday he wanted to get married to her, he was so much worse off now.

Jackie rejected him entirely. She came into the basement and told him that right off the bat that she was over him. His rejoinder had much less energy and sarcasm than it would have had in other circumstances. About the only thing he said to her, or to anyone else, was that she could still have Kelso, or move on to Fez. Forget about love, Jackie didn't even like him, and could he blame her? She said she was through pressuring guys to marry her, throwing herself at them. She said she was through with men completely. Then Kelso jubilantly gave him a high five, because, according to Kelso, they'd screwed Jackie up so bad that they had turned her away from guys to other chicks. Kelso was such a moron, such an insensitive ass. He slapped Kelso's hand and smiling weakly, but he didn't match his enthusiasm. He kept his eyes on his cards. And he recognized that he was an even bigger dumbass than Kelso. Kelso didn't mess Jackie up. He had. And, he lost the only girl he loved. Congratulations, he thought to himself, he had replaced Kelso as the stupidest man ever.

To a close observer reading the eyes behind the sunglasses, Hyde looked regretful and sad. He was subdued.

Red was right when he told Kitty, "Steven didn't know what he was doing." And Hyde didn't. He didn't have the wherewithal or energy to get a divorce. He wasn't even in a state of mind to question if he was indeed married. He never asked to see the marriage certificate. He took Samantha's word, her pictures, and his vague recollections as proof enough. He never questioned why she would follow him, arriving just hours after he did to Point Place, and why she did not mention anything about their "wedding" when they parted in Vegas. He didn't ask why she would want to leave Las Vegas in the first place. She had more opportunity there to do her work. From Point Place, she would have to travel all the time to Las Vegas for conventions, which would be expensive. Sam couldn't be with him for love. She didn't know him. Nothing made sense, and he, who barely trusted anything, never questioned her at all.

And, Sam was different. She was so completely different from the people in his life that she could have come from another planet. She was different, too, from the woman he thought he met in Las Vegas.

Sometimes while traveling to or spending time in exotic locales, in places so completely foreign from one's real life, it is easy to get into a relationship that would never happen at home. Had Hyde met Sam in Point Place when he was single, she might have been someone he slept with, or dated casually. She would never have become his girlfriend. He would never have brought her home. She was so inappropriate in almost everything she said and did in front of his friends, in front of the Formans. And, she was dumb as a brick. Generally, he was disdainful of stupid people, but he never spoke of the way she actually was to anyone, not even to himself.

The fact that Red and Kitty did not truly pressure Hyde to reconsider what he had done in Las Vegas and get a divorce had more to do with them being sensitive to Steven's current state of vulnerability after losing Jackie than with anything else. Sure, Red was uncomfortable trying to talk with Sam and get her to leave, as she prattled on about the professional benefits of wearing a thong to collect tips. Looking back on this, Red thought that Sam was a skilled manipulator, who had played Red, getting him to leave the basement before Red kicked her out of the house.

Red was tough. So was Kitty. They would have made Sam leave, or made Steven get a place of his own with her, had they not recognized that he needed them. Steven was a strong person, and he wouldn't have disappeared for a month, if he hadn't been really screwed up after finding Jackie and Michael together. The Formans were protective of Steven as if he were their own son. Like all parents who know their children well, they knew they had to deal with him differently than they would have with Eric or Laurie. Steven was very similar in temperament to Red, and did not respond well to being told what to do. Steven was also damaged. They thought it best to gently give Steven an out. Sam manipulated this situation too. While the words she spoke conveyed that she'd go right back to Las Vegas if he said the word, her tone indicated how hurt she would be if he did this. So, Kitty and Red let things be, and figured that everything would work itself out with a little time.

In the remaining four months of 1979, Jackie and Hyde found themselves living lives worse than anything their own enemies could have imagined. They were each miserable. Neither knew what to do. Each was undone. Their predicaments could be blamed on bad timing, poor choices, irresponsible behavior, even stupidity. Whatever the reason, they were no longer together. Nor did it seem that they would be again. They had lost each other. And this was the worst that could happen.


	16. Chapter 16 A Proposal

Moving On, Part III

Chapter 16 "A Proposal"

Two weeks after Hyde and Jackie returned to Point Place, Kelso moved to Chicago. He got himself kicked off the local police force, and took what he thought would be his dream job as part of the security team at the Playboy Mansion.

"What is it with these idiots and women who make their living through public displays of nudity?" Donna asked Jackie when the two girls were alone.

"Well," Jackie answered, "Steven's a pig; Michael will drool over any skank with two boobs; and Fez . . ."

"Yeah, I know," said Donna, "Fez is a pervert."

"Don't interrupt me, Donna," Jackie said in her annoying and endearingly bossy way. "I was going to say, 'Fez is a foreigner.'"

Donna rolled her eyes.

The day before Kelso got his job offer, he decided that he would propose to Jackie at Mr. and Mrs. Forman's 25th Anniversary party. Of course, Fez dropped the news to Jackie and Donna the first moment he could. Fez couldn't keep a secret. Jackie was surprised, and excited by Fez's news. She thought that she might just say yes. Why not? It wasn't like there was anything else going on in her life. She didn't have a job. She didn't have a boyfriend. Besides, she still really wanted to get married. Before she dated Steven, she'd always thought she and Michael would end up together. She and Steven sure weren't going to.

Wow! Someone was finally going to ask her to marry her. And, she didn't even have to trick or pressure him. Michael had made this decision all on his own. She would say, "Yes!"

Jackie wanted to ask Fez how Steven reacted when Michael told him and Fez about the proposal. She didn't dare, though, because this would get back to Steven through Fez, and she would feel ashamed if he knew that she was still thinking about him this way. Another reason was because she didn't want to know what Steven's reaction had been. Steven probably didn't care one way or the other. She could imagine him wearing his sunglasses and his jeans and one of those worn out t-shirts of his, raising his left eyebrow, shrugging, "whatever," or, "that's cool," and meaning it.

She pictured him sitting there, not giving a damn about her. Just sitting there in the basement, with Fez sitting on the couch, and Michael sitting on the lawn chair. Just sitting there on his dingy, little white chair. Sitting there with the Stripper on his lap. About to give him a lap dance. And then she'd do another lap dance for Michael, and one for Fez if those moronic horndogs were carrying any singles or fives. Because, that is what trashy, slutty whores did!

Then, the Stripper would take Steven back to his room. To his tiny cot. And charge him for sex. How dare he bring that Whore to the bed he had shared with her! Her bed, actually! How dare he let that Bitch violate the 1,000 thread-count, specially dyed, pink cotton sheets she had ordered just for him! Or the 800-fill down duvet, which had been hand- stuffed with the delicate feathers of geese from a remote area in the Pyrrenese Mountains in France!

Was Steven letting the Stripper smell the lavender scented candle that she had given him! Because, he sure as Hell hadn't returned it in the box with the other stuff she'd left. I'll have to go there tomorrow, she thought, when Steven and the Stripper are out, and take back all these things that I gave him, these things that I gave him to use while he was My Boyfriend. She would go there tomorrow, and take any other of his possessions that he might miss. She'd also put some of the cuter snapshots of herself in hidden places, in his clothes drawers, under his pillow, on top of his bureau, anywhere that he or the Stripper might unexpectedly discover one. That way she could haunt Steven, and undermine the Stripper's deservedly low self-esteem.

With great effort, Jackie came back to earth. Donna was talking about something boring. No great surprise. Jackie smiled and vaguely nodded. Donna could be so self-involved, sometimes.

When Kelso told Fez and Hyde about his plan to propose, he said that the happiest he had ever been was when he was together with Jackie. Hyde didn't say anything to discourage Kelso, but he did have the same feelings and wore the same subtle expression from the day after Sam arrived, when Jackie came into the basement to tell him that they were over. He tried to dissuade Kelso without being too obvious. "Who gets married on the spur of a moment?" Well, he shrugged to himself, he was married, why not her, too? And, why not to Kelso? Maybe, she had been happiest when she was with Kelso. He knew this wasn't true. Anyways, he thought, Jackie had made her bed. She might as well lie in it with Kelso.

Hyde was relieved the next day when Kelso told Fez and him that he had changed his mind, and was not going to propose to Jackie. Hyde felt even better when Kelso said that he had only really wanted to marry Jackie, because he felt directionless, no longer being a cop. Now that Kelso would be working at the Playboy Mansion, Kelso believed his life had meaning again. Also, Kelso said, a wife would only put a wrench in his plan to sleep with all the Bunnies, especially if his wife were Jackie. He'd end up spending most of his energy figuring out how to cheat on her with the Bunnies without getting caught.

Hyde went back to feeling helpless and sad, once Fez told them that Jackie was expecting Kelso's proposal, and how excited she was. He couldn't believe that she would say yes to Kelso. It hurt to think that she had been so happy at the thought. It was as though he meant nothing to her at all. Contrary to his own feelings and despite Kelso's, Hyde now tried to persuade Kelso to go through with the proposal. He told Kelso how angry Jackie would be if Kelso didn't propose at the party, like she expected. She'd never forgive him, Hyde told Kelso. It didn't fully occur to Hyde, then or later, that maybe the person Jackie would never forgive was himself. Hyde refrained from saying these things, not because he wanted Jackie to marry Kelso. Rather, he thought how disappointed she might be if she didn't get her proposal, even if it was from Kelso and not from him.

He moped to his room when he got home after work. He noticed that someone had been through his things, and some items were missing, like his lavender scented candle and some of his clothes, even his toothpaste. When he saw Jackie's picture sticking out from beneath his newspaper, he smiled to himself. He knew that she had not taken the sheets and the comforter, because he had stored them in Laurie's empty closet upstairs. He had put these things away the day after his return. He had packed them in the big linen box that Mrs. Forman gave him, and gently placed them on the closet's top shelf in the same careful way a bride preserves her wedding gown.

When Kelso got down on his knee and proposed to Jackie at the Forman's anniversary party that night, Hyde appeared detached, standing behind Red's pea-green chair with Sam next to him. Jackie also acted the way she normally did.

Upon hearing Jackie's reply, "no," Kelso told her that she had made him the happiest man on earth.

Hyde thought, Kelso might be the happiest man alive, but he was the most relieved. He did not want her to marry someone else, even if he had done. He did not want her to marry Kelso.

Jackie was also happy about her answer to Michael. Earlier that morning, Donna had painted a grimly comic picture of Jackie's future if she were to become Mrs. Michael Kelso. Jackie knew that she was fooling herself. She couldn't marry Michael. She didn't want to marry anyone other than Steven.


	17. Chapter 17 Another Breakup

Moving On, Part III

Chapter 17 "Another Breakup"

"How many couples breakup because the guy goes to Las Vegas and marries a stripper on a drinking binge," Donna wondered to herself one evening. She lay awake in bed thinking about her two closest friends. She had been thinking a lot about breakups, over the past couple of weeks, ever since she read Eric's last letter. Eric broke up with her in it. He wrote how the two of them had been growing apart, now that he lived so far away, and that their lives were so different.

Eric was working for the Peace Corps in Africa. He would be there for a year. He was part of a mobile unit that offered medical and social services to people in impoverished towns and villages throughout the continent. Eric coordinated the dispersal of supplies in the towns. He taught some English classes for children and adults in countries where English was the official language. When he finished his assignment next year, the government would pay all of his college tuition. Financing college was the only reason Eric had joined the Peace Corps, he said to her right after he had made his decision. He had told her that his primary concern was to be able to provide a good life for her once they were married. Eric frequently made decisions that affected them as a couple on his own without any discussion with her.

Donna wasn't entirely surprised when she read Eric's letter. He had been calling her less frequently for a while. Sometimes, he forgot to call her after they had agreed on a specific time. There were numerous nights that Donna fell asleep in the kitchen waiting for his call. When Eric did call, their conversations were short and strained. It wasn't like before he left, when the flow of conversation never ebbed, even though there wasn't that much to talk about in their small town.

Donna believed that her first and only boyfriend, though he sometimes acted like a bonehead, was a smart, sensitive guy. He expressed his thoughts and feelings with candor. His letter was thoughtful, and gentle. He told her that he thought about her all the time. He wrote how much he loved her, and that he would always love her. But it just wouldn't be fair, to her, if she were to spend the whole year waiting for him, when they were in such different places. He didn't want to be selfish. He didn't want to hold her back. He wrote that he didn't deserve her. No matter how well-expressed was his letter, the bottom line was that Eric had dumped her. Donna felt rejected, miserable, all those sad feelings that go along with a breakup.

She hadn't told anyone yet. She lied to her friends and family, and tried to act as though nothing were wrong. She told herself that she didn't want to tell her close friends that Eric had broken up with her, because their reactions wouldn't comfort her. Jackie would be uncharacteristically nice to her, Fez would hit on her, and Hyde would shrug. They would only make her feel worse. She didn't tell her dad either, because he would cry. Donna did need to confide in someone. So she chose to talk to Randy. Randy had just started working for Hyde in his record store, and increasingly hung out with their group. Donna liked him. She began to have plans alone with him. She thought he was smart and funny. Also, he was undemanding. She could talk about Eric with him. He would just listen and give her support. He didn't know Eric, so he didn't give her his opinion of the relationship or any advice, which made her feel better. In truth, Donna didn't confide in any of her close friends, because talking to them would make the breakup real.

It seemed that everyone around her was breaking up. Some friends of hers from high school had recently broken up, because they were going to different colleges, and the long distance thing wasn't working for them either. Her station manager was on his third divorce. The reason had to do with infidelity, or irreconcilable differences, something like that. Jackie and Hyde definitely had the weirdest breakup.

What was even weirder was that they still hung out with each other all the time. Donna realized that she was lucky that Eric was gone, because it made it easier for her to move on.


	18. Chapter 18 New Guy

Moving On, Part III

Chapter 18 "New Guy"

Randy Pearson started hanging out with Hyde and his friends in the Forman basement almost immediately after he met them. Randy had just moved to Point Place, but grew up in the Kenosha area. Had he grown up in Point Place, he would already have known everyone, or at least who they were by reputation. There was only one public elementary school, one public junior high school, and one public high school in Point Place. As it turned out, they knew a lot of the same people, and had some friends in common. Randy had moved to Point Place to be closer to his junior college, and to be closer to his Nana, who was elderly and in poor health. He already was part of a rock band with some friends from school, but needed a job. He was also lonely.

On his first day of looking for a job, he was hired by Hyde to work at Grooves. He thought his job was totally kick-ass. He could listen to his favorite rock groups for most of the day. The dress code was "come as you are." The girls who came into the store were hot. His co-worker Leo, a middle-aged hippie, always made him laugh. Randy wasn't sure if Leo's mind was actually fried from a life of heavy drug use, or if his nonsequiturs, literal interpretations of figurative language, and off-the-wall comments were a running joke he played on the world for his own amusement. Randy also thought his boss was cool. While Hyde would joke about chucking objects at customers who requested lame records, Hyde managed a very successful store. Soon after Randy started working at Grooves, he realized that his boss was intelligent, knowledgeable about all types of music, and worked exceptionally hard, although most people would never know it from looking at or talking to him, except for the part about knowing a lot about music. New customers sometimes thought Randy was the manager and Hyde, the employee, based on the differences in their attire and manner. Randy was always eager to please, while Hyde was polite but aloof. Although Hyde appeared relaxed, he was definitely in control. He gave Randy a lot of freedom in the store and allowed him to put into effect a number of his ideas, especially since Randy's promotional events invariably brought in more business.

Randy was also grateful to Hyde, because Hyde introduced him to his friends. He felt quickly accepted. He could tell that they formed a tight circle, and that, along with Mr. and Mrs. Forman and Bob, were a self-enclosed group. It appeared that they spent all their time together. If one of them had a party, the guest list generally consisted of the others. Randy wasn't complaining. He liked everyone, and felt lucky to be included, as he was new in town. Right off the bat, he was friends with Hyde and Kelso. Kelso didn't stay much longer in Point Place though, not after Randy's plans for a bachelor party for Hyde went terribly astray. Not only did Hyde, Fez, and Randy spend the night in jail, but Kelso got kicked off the Point Place police force. Kelso shortly after moved to Chicago to be closer to his daughter and to start his new job as a body guard at the Playboy Club.

It took a little while longer for Fez to warm up to Randy. He first thought Fez had a thing for Kelso, and blamed Randy for Kelso having to move away. Randy quickly dismissed this idea after he knew Fez better. Fez constantly talked about women, and how much he wanted to do it with one of them, any one of them. He spoke with rapture of the women who obsessed him, whom he spied on at night, whose hair he lovingly sniffed and fondled while he was working as a shampoo boy at the local beauty salon. Fez hit on Donna, Jackie, and Hyde's wife in a completely harmless way. Like everyone else who knew Fez, Randy thought that Fez was a pervert, lovable, but a pervert all the same. Randy figured Fez's resistance to him came from the fact that Randy was new to the group. Randy won Fez over by giving him candy bars every time he saw him. It was easy to buy candy for Fez, because Fez liked everything, especially chocolate. Once Randy had Fez's name put on the Hershey's mailing list, Randy was golden. Fez became even more enamored of him when he gave Fez a box of Lady Godiva truffles.

Randy especially liked Donna, who lived next door to the Formans. Donna's boyfriend was Mr. and Mrs. Forman's son Eric, who was away for the year working with the Peace Corps in Africa. Randy thought that this was very cool. He also thought that Eric was a lucky guy to have Donna as a girlfriend. He thought that Donna was beautiful, smart, and very down-to-earth. He loved her wry, intelligent humor. The two of them clicked right away, and after a couple of months, increasingly began to hang out alone together. Donna was very easy to talk to, and he loved listening to her. He felt compassion for her when things with her boyfriend began to sour, and was happy to provide a shoulder to cry on when Eric broke up with her. Long distance relationships never work, he told her. He had been in a couple of them, so he knew what she was going through. Randy didn't know exactly when, but soon after Eric broke up with Donna, he realized that he had a thing for her. He thought she kind of liked him too. He was hesitant to make a move, because he didn't want to be a rebound guy, but he thought that Donna was so hot that, if by some lucky chance she were interested in him, who was he to say no?

The only person that he didn't connect with was Jackie. They got along fine as part of the group, but they never developed their own separate friendship. He found her to be intimidating and somewhat off-putting. She was very beautiful in a singular way. She dressed stylishly and expensively. Her family was rich, and she lived in a mansion. She was not especially warm or approachable. He thought she was kind of a snob. She certainly criticized most of the people she hung out with or talked about. He didn't get why she was part of this group, because it seemed that she would be very choosy about whom she would deign to spend her time with. He also thought she was vain, self-centered, bossy, and mean. She was not at all the type of girl, or person even, that he liked. He did not get why she and Donna were best friends. He thought that Donna could do much better. After he and Donna started dating, his opinion of Jackie changed, and he began to value her more for the person she was beneath the surface. Nonetheless, the two never became friends, not because they hated one another, more because there was a lack of interest on either of their part.

Randy was completely amazed when he found out that Jackie and Hyde had dated, and had dated seriously. The two were so different. Except for their mutual friends, they didn't have anything in common. When Hyde introduced Sam as his wife, Randy thought Sam was exactly the kind of woman that he could picture Hyde with. Hyde was so cool; only he could marry a Las Vegas stripper, and bring her back to a small town like Point Place. Like Kelso and Fez, Randy thought Sam was really sexy. She was tall, tan, and blond with blue eyes. Her legs ran up to her chin. She had a great tush and a superb rack, and she really knew how to move. The guys didn't have to work very hard to imagine Sam naked. She always wore the skimpiest outfits, and often modeled her costumes, including her thongs and her pasties, in front of them. Only Kelso overtly ogled Sam, and he would automatically receive a punch on the arm from Hyde. Randy saw that Hyde was tough, and Randy stayed clear not to piss him off. All the same, Hyde didn't seem to mind at all that his wife walked around half-naked in front of his male friends. Hyde was that cool and confident. Hyde would make jokes about being married to a stripper, while Fez would drool over her and clap like a first-grader. Randy figured that the sex must be hot. It had to be with a woman like that.

If Sam was walking around the basement in costume and Donna and Jackie were around, Donna would act as she normally did. Jackie never spoke directly to Sam, and Sam ignored her too. Jackie would say the scornful things about Sam in front of Sam and Hyde. This was one of the reasons that Randy thought that Jackie was snobby, mean, and critical.

He thought Donna had to be messing with him when she told them how close Jackie and Hyde had come to getting married. He told Donna how he kind of thought that Hyde and Jackie hated each other. He didn't not understand their relationship at all.


	19. Chapter 19 Ruined

Moving On, Part III

Chapter 19

I rewrote this chapter, and will rewrite ch.20. I didn't like them for a number of reasons. I've been trying to figure out a way to explain season 8 since I wrote Chapter 10. It's hard to create a unity over two seasons where none exists. It's also difficult to explain behavior that goes against how people act in reality. When I wrote the chapter dealing with Donna's breakup with Eric, and then the one about Randy, I was attempting to give the perspective of a rational, objective character looking at how J&H interact w/ each other. But, both chapters ended up going in a different direction, and belong more in a story about Donna and Eric. I'm keeping them in to foreshadow a B-story that I may continue once Eric returns.

The dream recurred just as it had done every night for the past two weeks. As usual, there were variations from the previous nights' dreams. This time Jackie wore a white satin dress with a long train. Her hair was up, and her face covered by her veil. Jack Burkhardt walked her down the aisle and gave her hand to Hyde when they reached the altar. The rings were exchanged, and the veil, lifted. He leaned in to kiss her. And, just like every other night, before the lips met, Hyde woke up abruptly. And like every other night, he felt sad and alone. He also had a feeling of regret and longing.

On this particular night, he found himself alone in bed. His actual wife was working in Chicago performing for an audience of drunken salesmen at a pharmaceutical convention. This didn't really bother him. What did bother him was his nightmare. He was always the groom, and Jackie, his bride. Her dress, the church, the music would change in each dream, but he always woke up at the moment before their union.

"She has ruined me," he would think once he got over the initial feelings he had upon waking up. "I'm not a man anymore. I've become Fez, or something worse. I close my eyes and I'm trapped in this nightmare of one of her stupid wedding fantasies. And the most miserable thing is that I want to be there." He also began to imagine her with Kelso. This, too, became part of his nightly torture. He could not stand the thought of her letting Kelso touch her that way.

The only way Hyde could sleep through the night was to drink enough beers so that he didn't dream, or to fck Sam. And he did fck Sam in ways and places that he had not done with anyone else. With her, he became increasingly uninhibited and less circumspect. And, the highs he found with her distracted him enough so that he found respite, though only temporary, from feelings and thoughts that were painful, even disturbing.

He began to feel anger towards Jackie for destroying the person he whom he believed he was. He was still bitterly pained from seeing her with Kelso. As his thoughts about the two of them took on an obsessive quality, he started to resent her for having ever dated Kelso at all, even before she was with him. His anger and resentment grew to bitterness and loathing. He began to believe that he hated her, and he began to treat her with scorn.

Hyde had always expressed himself with irony and sarcasm, but underneath there was acceptance and affection for his friends that took away the sting of his comments. More and more, his words to Jackie took on a caustic tone, and his barbs were meant to hurt her. He laughed at her falls, and pointedly brought attention to her faults. His most frequent refrain was that she was bitchy, shallow, and purely materialistic. Or, that she was stupid. That Jackie was none of these things, now or when she was with him, he shut out of his mind. "It took being married to a stripper for me to realize how annoying Jackie is, a fact that I was unaware of when we were dating," he told Randy one night. Whenever Hyde got trashed, he would go into a similar rant about Jackie. This had become boring to Randy, Donna and even Fez.

"Next time we all go out together and are going to indulge in a mind altering substance, it's going to be pot, because that vomiting from last night was gross," Donna said to Fez and Randy when they were getting a bite to eat at the hub.

"Yeah, I'll even go farther. Let's do this whenever we hang with him," Randy added. "Mellow and paranoid I can handle, but burping and vomiting…" Randy grimaced.

Fez looked thoughtful. "I don't know. I like it when Hyde is drunk. He puts his arm around me. I spray his breath with Binaca. Oh, it's Minty Fresh. And. If he passes out, I get to put him to bed."

"Fez, does Hyde know that you do this?" Donna asked.

Jackie said, "Steven is a pig. I can't believe I ever let him touch me."


	20. Chapter 20 Safety

Moving On, Part III

Chapter 20, Safety

Donna and Randy arrived at Jackie and Fez's apartment laughing. "You guys are not going to believe this. Hyde's wife has another husband. It's hilarious," Donna said.

"More like gross!" Jackie interposed. "So, what does that mean? Steven's not married?"

"Nope," said Randy. "Except in places where bigamy or polygamy is legal. She could have more than two husbands. We don't know."

Observing the confused look on Fez's face, Donna clarified. "Fez, bigamy is when a person has two spouses. Polygamy is when it's more than two."

"Oh, such a wonderful place can't be real," Fez piped in. "Imagine. It would be one giant sexy slumber party."

Jackie rolled her eyes. "Fez, that's an orgy," she said aloud. She was thinking that Steven had probably been there and done that in Las Vegas, or maybe in Point Place after the Slut came to town.

"He belongs with that Whore. They're both white trash. I can't believe that just over six months ago I was so desperate to marry him," she finished.

When Donna told them that Sam wanted to stay with Steven, and had told him that she loved him, Jackie said, "I'm going to barf." She was thinking about some of the other times that she'd been in the basement, when the Stripper cloyingly told Steven that she loved him. Hyde would invariably give Sam a brief, quizzical look, and move on with whatever conversation that the group was having. She continued her thoughts. God, I hate that bitch. She's as fake as her boobs.

Randy interrupted her. "Don't you mean, 'Barf me out' or 'Gag me with a spoon.' You know. Frank Zappa, 'Valley Girl.'"

Jackie gave him a false smile. She was thinking that sometimes Randy could be such a geek that he almost makes Eric seem cool. Well, at least Donna wasn't so desperate that she wass dating, like, Fez.

That evening after Randy left and Fez went out to the movies with his new girlfriend Hilary, Donna asked Jackie seriously, "So, are you going to finish that conversation you and Hyde started before Sam got here? Do you still want to get back together with him?"

On several occasions after the Stripper arrived in Point Place, Jackie had confided to Donna that she still wished she and Steven could find a way to get back together. She had felt that way during some of the times when the Stripper was out of town, and the group had converged at the Forman house. These were all times when Steven was acting, more or less, like his old self, even if at the same time there seemed to be an enormous chasm between the two of them.

"No," she replied. "Have you really looked at him with that moustache? He looks like Donald Sutherland in _Invasion of the Body Snatchers_. Blech! You know I think his soul has been snatched and was replaced in Las Vegas. He's so different. Whatever feelings I might have had were lingering ones. I don't feel anything for him, except maybe pity and disgust. Did you hear the things he said to me the other week when we were looking for Mrs. Forman's ring?"

"Yeah," Donna said. "I've never seen Hyde act so mean. It's like he hates you."

"Well, I don't care. It's time I move on and find a new boyfriend. Everyone else has somebody but me. And my career isn't exactly going the way I want it to," Jackie posited.

"Yeah, I never thought I'd see the day when Jackie Burkhart became a junior hair sweeper. Why don't you apply for the position as manicurist?" Donna asked her.

"Gross. I am not touching other people's nasty feet. But I do have to do something. My mom said that if I'm not getting married, then I have to support myself. She's cut me off." Jackie seemed depressed when she said this.

"Wow, Jackie. I'm sorry. She's not talking to you." Donna tried to console her friend.

"No, from my credit cards. She's cut me off from my credit cards." Once again, Jackie thought that Donna could be so obtuse. "Anyways, I know what I'm looking for in a guy. I'm going out there, and I'm going to find myself a new boyfriend. I'm Jackie Burkhart. I'm beautiful. And, I'm back. And, it's not going to be Fez."

"I know. I was just kidding when I said that" Donna said. "Except for the part about women's shoes. There's nobody who loves a strappy sandal more than Fez."

Jackie agreed. "You don't have to tell me. He's always stealing mine. Anyways, I'm looking for a guy who has all the things I looked for in Steven, and never found."

Donna countered, "Jackie, Hyde wasn't that bad. You two were good for each other."

When it later began to dawn on Jackie that Fez might in fact be the perfect man for her, she felt confused and a little repulsed. However, over time, she started to believe that Fez was exactly what she was looking for. She wanted a man who acted like a gentleman, who made her laugh, and who shared her interest in women's shoes, or shared her interests in general, unlike Steven, who invariably mocked the things she was interested in. She wanted her next boyfriend to buy her presents, compliment her, and come when she called, or do as she wished. There were times when she was with Steven and they had been fighting that the tiniest part of her missed these things about Michael. Michael had always been very easy for her to handle, except for the part about his constant womanizing.

She felt that the only thing on her list that Steven consistently did for her was to make her laugh. But, he had also made her cry. She wanted to find someone she felt safe with. She wanted to have a relationship in which there was no risk of having her heart broken.

If Hyde found safety in a relationship that was completely based on sex and devoid of any emotional attachment, Jackie wanted one with a solid grounding in affection and trust, even if that meant it lacked that spark that separated romance from friendship.

And, she wanted to find this relationship quickly. Before Steven found another woman. Part of her knew that Steven wasn't going to stay with the Stripper. It was obvious that he didn't love her. And although it had pained Jackie that Steven stay married to Sam, she had enough self-awareness to know that she would have felt infinitely worse if Steven had actually fallen in love and married a woman who equaled her in beauty, intelligence, or strength of character. She had taken a bit of comfort in the fact that Sam was a very inferior type of woman when compared to her. And this realization of Jackie's had nothing to do with Sam being a stripper.

So, all these things were going on in Jackie's mind when she felt herself falling for Fez. And, despite numerous setbacks over a period of a month, she found herself together with him at the end of the year. On New Year's Eve, the two shared their first kiss, even though it had been difficult for them to make that transition from friendship to dating. They kissed on the water tower, where Fez had brought her to mark the beginning of their new relationship as girlfriend and boyfriend. The kiss was sweet, and Jackie even found it romantic that Fez, in an attempt to rewrite history, had mistakenly changed Kelso's tag, "Michael + Jackie" to "Michael + Fez." Fez told her that he had always loved her, and Jackie felt safe.


	21. Chapter 21 New Year

Moving On, Part IV

Chapter 21 "New Year"

"Are you going to an audition for 'Deep Throat 2?" Eric Forman asked Hyde.

Hyde scowled. "No."

"Seriously, man, what's with the moustache?" Eric asked lightly, "Because that's just too funny."

"I was going for a look that would say, 'Trashy, but also Scummy.'" Hyde joked at his own expense.

"Alright. Mission accomplished." Eric gave him the thumbs up. "So it's like I leave and everything goes to Hell. You go to Chicago to propose to Jackie, you discover her with Kelso in a compromising position. Then, you go to Las Vegas, end up married to a stripper, find out you're not actually married to her, because she has another husband. Jackie falls for Fez. They end up together. And, Kelso gets himself kicked off the police force, and becomes a security guard at the Playboy Mansion." Eric said shaking his head and smiling. "O.K. That last part about Kelso makes sense. It was either that, or him shooting off some fingers. Wow. I thought I saw some messed up shit in Africa, but this is by far worse. And, you quit the circle, and have taken up jogging."

Then, Eric said more seriously, "But, man, I'm really sorry about what happened with Jackie. That must have been horrible."

Hyde shrugged it off. "It's no big deal. Anyways, you were right. Jackie is the Devil, and a real bitch. You know what I think. Jackie and Fez will be good for each other."

"Man," Eric said in his deadpan style, "so you still hate her. Or you're really pissed at Fez."

"No, neither, man," Hyde responded with sincerity. "I thought about it, and I really think she'll be happy with him. And Fez will finally have a girlfriend, so he'll stop abusing the couch."

Hyde had been in his room the other week when he overheard Jackie tell Fez that she wanted to be his girlfriend. He had been getting ready to go out. He was caught off guard, just as he had been when Fez told him how Jackie had told Fez that she had fallen for him and wanted to be with him. Now in the basement, Hyde had to sit down on his bed, and catch his breath. He felt immeasurable sadness, as he had an epiphany. He realized that he had tried every way to keep her apart from Fez. He knew that all the things that he had said and done to her since he'd returned home had been immature and cruel. They had come from a place of bitterness and rage. All at once, his anger towards her disappeared to be replaced by sorrow. He had lost Jackie. She had moved on, and it was time for him to let her go. Had he been soft, he would have cried. As it was, he stayed in his room until Jackie and Fez had left. He later sat on the couch, depressed, listening to music, or watching t.v. He didn't leave the basement until he had gotten enough control over his feelings to mask them. It took several days.

But, it was good having Forman back. Eric was one of the only people Hyde could communicate with in his peculiar style. He was one of the only people who understood him and knew how to talk to him. Hyde had missed Eric.

"But, seriously, man," Eric asked him, "when are you going to shave that thing off."


	22. Chapter 22 Apologies

Moving On, Part IV

Chapter 22, "Apologies"

"You are a shallow princess who only cares about looks and money!!" he shouted.

That morning Hyde had decided to do the mature thing and apologize to Jackie. The apology had not gone as planned.

"That's a lie!" Jackie shouted back. "If I did, I would never have dated you!"

"Can you guys please keep it down?" Fez interrupted. "I'm trying to watch the Family Feud."

Hyde turned his back and was about to stalk to his room, when Jackie jabbed at him, "I knew you were behind it anyways. Telling Fez to get back at me by attacking my looks. That tacky green hair dye…"

"No, Jackie." Fez intervened, "The green hair dye was my idea. Hyde did tell me to go after your looks, though."

"Shut up, Fez." Jackie responded. "And all those one-night stands of his. I should have seen your hand behind that, too. The women were cheap enough."

"Hey," Hyde answered back, "I was only trying to help Fez out."

"And he did, Jackie," added Fez. "My lovemaking technique has really improved. You will be impressed."

"See! You should be thanking me!" Hyde grabbed his jacket to leave.

"You're a malicious jerk!" Jackie yelled. "And you know what? All that stuff I wrote on Fez's car. None of it was about Fez. I meant them all about you!"

"Jackie, please," Fez interrupted once again, "I have seen Hyde naked plenty of times, and he does not have a small…"

Hyde stopped him, "Shut up!"

Hyde slammed the back door and Jackie stomped up the stairs. He headed back in through the kitchen sliding door to get a coke from the refrigerator. He stopped in his tracks when he saw Jackie in the kitchen also going to get a drink. The two of them glared at each other, turned around, and left the kitchen.

The second time he tried to apologize to her the conversation quickly took a turn and veered into something else. This time the two of them were alone in the basement, and had been yelling at each other non-stop for the better part of the last hour. If anyone else was at home, neither of them knew it. They were entirely engrossed in their fight.

He touched his cheek where he still felt the sting of her slap.

"You were with that whore for months!!" Jackie screamed.

"So! You're with a pervert." Hyde shouted back.

"Fez is not a pervert!!!" Jackie yelled.

"Yeah! We'll just see!!! And you were with Kelso! You were with that man-slut for years!" Hyde's anger was unabated.

"That was before we ever got together!" Jackie yelled.

"I don't care!" Hyde shouted back.

He stomped up the stairs to the kitchen. She slammed the back door shut and went up the outside steps. Once again they met in the kitchen.

"You're still here!! Why are you always still here?!!" Hyde yelled.

"Because!!!" Jackie kicked him so hard in the shin that he buckled over with pain.

Fez had just arrived at the Forman house, and walked into the kitchen. "Ai! This again! You two have to stop fighting. C'mon, let's go downstairs and we can all watch Dallas. Tonight Sue Ellen's going to quit drinking."

"I doubt it," Jackie shouted, and left.


	23. Chapter 23 New Boyfriend

Moving On, Part IV

Chapter 23, "New Boyfriend"

A/N: Chapter 20 was re-written. I'm not sure if everyone who's reading this knows that. It's about why Jackie would want to get together w/ Fez.

There are a lot of reasons why a Fez/Jackie love story doesn't work. It seems that the writers are trying to write a love story on the pattern that the heroine discovers, after being heartbroken by the guy she thought she loved, that she's actually in love w/ her best friend, who's loved her all along, or, like she does, discovers by the end of the movie that he too loves her. _Pride & Prejudice_, _When Harry Met Sally_ and _Bridget Jones_ are based on this pattern.

It doesn't work also b/c, after _The Ice Shack_ in s.3, Fez no longer has romantic feelings for Jackie. And neither does Jackie for Fez. If the characters had gotten together in s.2 or s.3, a little love story would have been cute. The romance in s.8 is handled very poorly. There are no signs, meant just for the audience, before it dawns on either J. or F., that the characters have feelings for each other. The other reason a love story btwn J&F doesn't work is that, beginning in s.4 and thr/out the series until the final 2 episodes, Fez stands out as a character, who is treated as entirely farcical. His feelings aren't dealt w/ in a dramatic, albeit comic, way. His storyline always follows the same pattern. Fez is desperate for a girl. It seems that he is about to get one, but doesn't b/c of outlandish external reasons or b/c of his own failings. For the most part, Fez's character shows no growth. He's written and played like Dwight in _The Office_, or the characters in _Arrested Dvlpmnt_. The rest of the characters are comic, but also have real emotions which are vicariously felt by the audience, like the characters in _Friends_, or Jim & Pam. I'm trying to write Fez in the way he's been done thr/out most of the series. I'm also trying to bring more levity to the story in general. I liked the story of J&H b/c it's a romantic comedy, rather than a drama. Hopefully, these things in my story work.

If the chapters in part IV aren't fleshed out enough, it's b/c I want to finish this story w/in the next couple of weeks, before real life takes up all my time & energy. I'll most likely go back later and edit. Like everyone else who writes fan fiction, I am grateful for and encouraged by reviews, and love getting more. Thank you so much to everyone who has written reviews, and to everyone who is reading this!

"How's it going with Fez?" Donna asked Jackie on the phone. It was the end of January, and Donna had been at the University of Wisconsin, Madison for three weeks. Jackie talked to her best friend on the phone at least twice a week. The two girls missed each other, and wanted to stay close. If Jackie hadn't yet visited Donna at college, it was only because she worked at the hair salon on weekends.

"Fez and I are doing great." Jackie lied. She wasn't entirely convincing.

"Yeah" Donna intoned. "So, it still doesn't bug you that Fez spent every night in my closet the week before I left?"

"Oh, um, no," Jackie replied. "He didn't want to make you feel bad before you left. And, he did invite me to spy on you with him."

"Oh, that's right. That was pretty funny, and considerate." Donna tried to keep the conversation light. She was baffled that Jackie continued to date Fez. So was everybody else. Fez was sweet and handsome, but weird. There was no getting around this fact. "So, have you guys gone to 2nd yet?"

"Yes! And, it felt as special as our first kiss." She meant their first kiss as a couple on the water tower. Jackie wasn't being entirely truthful with Donna, although she wasn't exactly lying either. Fez had pestered her for three weeks with his sing-song question, "So, when are we going to 2nd base?" When they finally did go to 2nd, it was accidental. They were kissing on Fez's couch, "with tongue," as Fez reminded her, arching his left eyebrow and smiling at her, when Fez's hand accidentally brushed against her right breast as he reached for his grape soda on the side table behind her. "Soft yet firm," Fez complimented her. He then placed his hand around the same breast, resting it there, unmoving, stationary. They continued like this for another ten minutes, until she broke it off because she had to go to work. "That was nice," she demurred. The truth was it was strange and awkward, although Fez had been sweet and had made her smile.

Sweet yet awkward was how Jackie would have characterized most of the times she and Fez made out if she were being entirely honest. Except for when he would jump on her and try to wrestle her to the couch and paw at her. These times she would have described as strange and comical. During the times it actually felt hot kissing Fez, because of his agility for frenching that came from rolling his _r_'s, it seemed as though Fez were performing. More often than not, Jackie felt unsatisfied after she and Fez had been making out. She also felt undesirable.

It was around the end of January that she and Hyde had started fighting just about every time they saw each other. Unlike before when they traded insults, now they screamed at each other about things that they had said and done to each other over the past year. Their fights would conclude with him grabbing his coat and leaving, saying, "I'm out of here," or with her preceding her exit with a swift kick to his shin, or a hard stomp on one of his feet. Invariably, she would go to the mall and calm herself down by shopping. Trips to the mall had always elevated her mood.

On this particular trip, she apologized to Fez. "I'm so sorry for fighting with Steven in front of you. It's just I hate him so much. But, I don't want to make you feel uncomfortable or jealous." She was feeling guilty.

"Don't worry, Jackie," Fez answered her. He tried to reassure her that his feelings weren't hurt. "I know you two hate each other, and I don't feel threatened at all. Hyde has told me over and over, and over, and over and over again how he thinks you're annoying, how he felt trapped with you, and how he never would want to be with you again, even if he were stuck with you on a deserted island."

Jackie was incredulous, and shot Fez a look to get him to stop talking. Fez was oblivious.

He continued, "Oh, and he likes to add that you're a skankoid. In fact, when I asked him if it was alright with him if I became your boyfriend, his exact words were, "It's cool with me if you want to date Satan's child. But beware. She destroys everything in her path. That Hyde is so funny…"

Jackie gave him a hard pinch to the arm. She cut him off before he could go on. "Hey, Fez, those pants would make your butt look cute."

She knew how important Fez's appearance was to him. Just the other day she had caught Fez taking a pair of her panties from her drawer. She gave him a questioning look, "Fez?"

"Oh, Jackie, don't worry. I'm not taking your panties for any perverted reason. No. I want to wear them. I really like the way they hug my junk." He made a point of sticking out his crotch. "They weally make my wenis look wonderful." Fez smiled.

Jackie put her head in her hands. Once again, just like when she had taken Michael back, Jackie had a boyfriend whose behavior often made her cringe with embarrassment. She realized that she would need to step up her effort to mold Fez into what she wanted him to be.


	24. Chapter 24 Godparents

Moving On, Part IV

Chapter 24 "Godparents"

Eric and Hyde were driving to Chicago to attend the baptism of Kelso's daughter Betsy. Despite the fact that they had broken up, Jackie and Hyde remained Betsy's godparents, and no one had objected. When Kelso told them at separate times about the date and time of the Christening, he said how he thought that they were still meant to be together. Each of them had rolled their eyes. But, neither of them backed out. They each took their commitment seriously, even if neither of them knew exactly what being a godparent entailed.

Most importantly, Brooke did not object. To her, the baptism would make Hyde and Jackie honorary uncle and aunt to her child. In the event that she died or couldn't care for her daughter, her parents were to raise Betsy. She didn't see either Hyde or Jackie as being ready to parent a child, as singles or as part of the couple they had been. With even more certainty, she didn't see Michael as capable of raising her daughter, but she did want to show him that she valued and respected him as the father of their child. Allowing him to choose Betsy's godparents was one of the ways that she had done this.

Brooke cared very much for Michael Kelso, and thought that he was a good father, despite his limitations. Kelso was in love with his baby daughter. He was energetic and sweet-hearted, like a young boy. He had a large, rambunctious and affectionate family, and very loving parents. Given that she was a single mother who accidentally became pregnant from a one-night stand, Brooke believed herself to be fortunate. She and Michael became a couple during her pregnancy, ending their relationship only when she went home to Chicago to be with her parents for the birth.

It all turned out for the best. She had been a good girlfriend for Kelso, treating him with affection and patience. He had been a good boyfriend too. He was loving and committed to her and their unborn child. However, the two never would have worked as a couple past the pregnancy and maybe even the initial years after their daughter had been born. She was too intelligent for him, and, despite his sweetness, he would never had been able to satisfy her as a mate.

The time Michael had spent with her was the first time that he had had a girlfriend who treated him with respect. Even though he had been with many women, and was basically a man-slut or a "himbo," he had only had a few relationships. In none of these was he treated respectfully, certainly, not with Jackie. Although they officially agreed that they broke up because of his constant cheating, he had been the one to break up with her at the end of their second relationship. Jackie completely dominated him, and had given him no freedom to act or even to think. While he didn't mind being under her thumb so much, he finally rejected her because she was always putting him down. As he told her at the time, she made him feel bad about himself. He blamed her constant criticism as the reason for his cheating on her. This was false. Like many young men of his age, Kelso was constantly horny. Unlike most young men, Kelso utterly lacked self-control.

All of this happened at the Formans' summer barbeque right before he ran away to California with Donna. After Jackie had tricked her way into becoming engaged to him, he realized it wouldn't be too long before she made him marry her, and this would have been disastrous for them both. He was astute in recognizing, even if she didn't, that they weren't right for each other. It would take another year for him to completely get over his earlier feelings for her, and to accept that she belonged together with Hyde.

So, on this day in early spring that was to be the day Jackie and Hyde committed themselves before God and the whole world to Miss Betsy Kelso, they rode in separate cars and thought about the other. Hyde drove with Eric, and Jackie, with Donna: so much for the gas shortage. Kitty and Red drove up separately with Bob and Leo, while Fez had spent the last night of Kelso's career as a security officer at The Playboy Mansion in Chicago with Kelso. While Jackie didn't object to her new boyfriend's fixation on Hugh Hefner's beautiful and sexy creatures, Brooke told Kelso that, if he wanted to play a part in his daughter's life, he would have to quit right away. And, of course, Kelso did.

In Jackie's dad's Buick, she and Donna hashed over their lives. Donna described her classes and new social life, while Jackie talked about her relationship with Fez, and how neither she nor Hyde could restrain themselves from fighting each other.

Donna seemed happier than she had been in a long time. She seemed to have found herself again. Although she didn't say anything about this to Donna, Jackie had been very concerned about her friend since Eric had abandoned Donna at the wedding rehearsal. Jackie believed that Donna had lost herself, and had become weak, letting Eric define who she was and what her future would be. Donna had compromised herself for Eric to such a degree that her feminism resembled her mother Midge's more than anything else. While Jackie had very traditional desires and plans for her life, and would have been the last person to describe herself as a feminist, believing them to be bra-burning quasi-lesbians with unshaven underarms and legs, she was a strong person who demanded that she be treated equally, if not with superiority and deference.

And so, everything positive that Donna told her about her new life in Madison relieved Jackie's concerns, and made her happy for her friend. Jackie knew that Donna was sincere about her feelings about her new life, because Donna had integrity in her honesty, and was a poor liar. Jackie wasn't so honest in discussing her relationship. There were many things about her life that she held back now. She believed that she didn't want to stain what should be a happy event, the baptism, with her problems.

And Donna, just as she had been throughout the year since Eric left, had no idea how Jackie was feeling, or what Jackie was thinking. Jackie hadn't ever held Donna accountable for her insensitivity regarding Jackie's breakup with Hyde, because she knew that, in a lot of ways, Donna wasn't herself during this time.

Eric and Hyde in the Vista Cruiser similarly caught up with each other. Both were open and honest about their lives. Those places, in which they weren't, were entirely due self-deception, and had nothing to do with any attempt to be covert.


	25. Chapter 25 Baptism

Moving On, Part IV

Chapter 25 "Baptism"

The gang congregated outside the church before the service was to start. Everyone was happy to celebrate together on such a special day in the life of one of their closest friends. Yet, there was estrangement among the former couples. Jackie and Hyde did put aside their differences and refrained from arguing to avoid spoiling the day for everyone else. Each determined that the best way to do this would be to maintain as much distance from the other as possible without appearing to be impolite. This proved a difficult task because, as they were about to be made Betsy's godparents, the ceremony necessitated physical proximity and civility between them.

There was also tension between Donna and Eric. Despite having shared an emotional, passionate kiss upon Eric's return on New Year's Eve, so many things had happened to each of them while Eric was gone that they, too, remained apart. They had spoken several times since Donna left for Madison. They were trying to reestablish their friendship, and yet each experienced a certain amount of awkwardness and sadness when they spoke, and now that they were together.

To keep in the proper spirit of the Baptism, each of the four suppressed any unpleasant feelings they were experiencing, although none of them could entirely prevent the intrusion of unwelcome thoughts. Fortunately, the rest of the group could celebrate without any reservations.

The ceremony was to follow the regular Sunday service at the Church Brooke and her family belonged to. Kelso was also a member, although he didn't attend church with as much frequency as Brooke did. He had joined the church to please Brooke, and to involve himself in his daughter's upbringing. Brooke appreciated this. And, despite Michael Kelso's job and proclivities, he was a very popular member of the congregation, although a number of the men wisely kept an eye on their older daughters when he was around. When they did go to church together, Brooke, Kelso, and Baby Betsy were regarded with fondness, even if their arrangement was not conventional. And so, the church was packed on this day.

In keeping with their role as godparents, Jackie had bought a beautiful hand-made baptismal gown that she gave to Betsy, and Hyde gave his god-daughter a silver rattle with her name and birth date engraved upon it. He had to go to Kitty for help with finding an appropriate gift. Had he and Jackie still been together, this would have been something that she would have taken care of, as it was entirely out of his sphere of knowledge.

If baptism marks the beginning of the individual's spiritual life as a Christian within that faith, to be "born again," in a more general sense, is to undergo a metaphorical transformation of self. Each of the young people visiting from Point Place did experience some degree of the clarity that comes from discarding those aspects of one's life which no longer work, and from the emergence of a new self that is closer to authenticity and maturity.

Kelso found that being a good father to his daughter meant that he had to find a job that his daughter would respect him for as she grew older. Fez learned that he had to be more true to himself, and make changes in his life that would reflect this. Donna committed herself to continuing to move back to the strong young woman that she had once been. Eric knew that he needed to be honest to his friends and family about decisions and commitments he had made while he was in Africa. Hyde discovered that he had to forgive Jackie and truly make amends to her. Jackie realized that it was unhealthy for her to spend time with someone who treated her with contempt and scorn, and that if Hyde couldn't treat her with the kindness and respect she was due than she would need to cut him out of her life.


	26. Chapter 26 Get Ready

Moving On, Part IV

Chapter 26 "Getting Ready"

Eric and Hyde planned to stay over in Milwaukee for the night before returning home. Hyde was going to meet with W.B. to talk about business, and Eric wanted to spend time with a friend of his from Africa. On the car ride home, they continued their conversation from before.

"So you see my problem?" Hyde asked.

"You want say you're sorry, but every time you start apologizing, you end up fighting with her instead." Eric summarized. "Yeah. It sounds to me like you want to have sex with her again."

"Well, that's a given." Hyde answered. "But seriously, man, what do you think I should do? I want to do the right thing, but. . ."

Eric thought about it before he said anything. "Look, you've just got to forgive her for what happened, or almost happened in Chicago, and move past it. For your own sake as well as hers. I don't know; just do what she did after you slept with that nurse."

"That was different." Hyde interrupted.

"Right. Her having sex with Kelso, because she's sad and lonely, mostly because of you, is unforgivable, but paranoid revenge sex is alright," Eric countered. "Anyways, what I mean is that you can't keep harboring all this anger and shit. You've got to let it go. You're not with her anymore . . . and you've got to just let it go." Eric finished, "If you really want to do the right thing, you'll say you're sorry and you'll mean it."

Hyde kept staring out the window and he exhaled. "I know. You're right." He nodded to himself. "You're right."

Later in the evening, after both Eric and Hyde had spent the day in Milwaukee pursuing their plans, they met up again to have dinner with W.B. at his club. While Eric and Hyde would have been fine eating burgers at a coffee shop, W.B. wanted to take them out somewhere nice for steaks. W.B. enjoyed all the privileges that came from being wealthy. And, he liked to dispense his largesse with generosity, especially, when he was with his recently discovered son and his friends.

"You shaved that thing off at last." W.B. was referring to Hyde's moustache, which had elicited universally bad reviews.

"Yeah, Mrs. Forman said, if I didn't do it myself before this weekend, she was going to get Donna to pin me down while Fez shaved it off and gave me a facial." Hyde responded in deadpan.

"Good for Kitty Forman. That lady knows how to think…and drink. Do you two want more bourbon?" W.B. asked.

As the waiter brought them more drinks, W.B. lit his cigar and continued talking. "So, now that you're single again, Steven, do you have any plans? Oh, yeah, I was meaning to ask. Did you ever find out the last name of that wife of yours?"

"Nope. Don't know it, don't want to know it." Hyde responded.

"You're lucky, son. That woman is crazy, and you don't want to married to crazy. I've been down that road before," W.B. continued.

"Yeah, Hyde, so what does it mean? If she had another husband before you married her, does that mean your marriage to her is annulled?" Eric asked.

W.B. responded. "It's more like it never happened, legally. I had my lawyers check everything to make sure it was all taken care of. I was worried that she would come after you once she knew about my money."

"The burdens of being too rich. . ." Eric sighed.

"I don't think she even knew that we were related. I think she thought you were just another guy slipping her some twenties. But, thanks, W.B., I really appreciate everything you've done." Hyde said.

"I know, and you're welcome. If you ever need help getting out of a fake marriage again, I'm here for you." W.B. smiled. "But I brought this up, because now that you're no longer under the impression that you're married, are you getting back together with the other one . . . Jackie? You two kept hanging out together so much, I just figured you would, even if you acted like you hated each other."

"No," Hyde answered. "She's with Fez, and I'm happy for them both."

W.B. understood. "So you do in fact hate her, or you're mad at the foreign kid. Which is it?"

The next morning on the car ride home Hyde got himself ready to truly apologize to Jackie when he saw her next, which he figured would probably be sometime that afternoon. Jackie usually came over to the Formans by then.

He and Eric continued to talk like before, but this time they focused on Eric's life.

"So when are you going to tell Donna about Mandy?" he asked.

Eric thought about it. "I don't know. I've been waiting for a good moment, and I just can't seem to find one. You didn't say anything, did you?"

"No, but you're going to have to sometime." Hyde said.

Eric said, "It's just . . . I've done so much to Donna already, even before I left. How do I tell her now that I met someone else when I was gone, and I've fallen in love and I want to marry her?"

"You could just have her show up at your house one day when Donna's there, and say, 'Eric, don't you remember, we got engaged?' That's how I told Jackie that I met someone else." Hyde said ironically.


	27. Chapter 27 Coming Clean

Moving On, Part IV

Chapter 27 Coming Clean

To say Steven Hyde was not good at self-expression was akin to saying that Richard Nixon had a problem with honesty. Generally, Hyde was better at communicating with a gesture than sitting down for a heart-to-heart. So, it took him a lot of reflection to find the exact words he wanted to say to Jackie. And, even then, he botched it up on the first several attempts.

Hyde didn't see her that afternoon when he and Eric got back from their trip. In fact, he didn't see her for several days. And he couldn't find a way to be alone with her for several more days. But, the time did come when he walked out of his bedroom and found Jackie sitting on the couch in the basement by herself. She was waiting for Eric, Donna, and Fez. They were going to see "The Outsiders" together that evening. Hyde had plans to go out with Kelso, Randy and some other friends.

He approached her tentatively. "Hey," he said, "I've been meaning to talk to you." Jackie looked up at him, and was understandably guarded. In his previous attempts to apologize, he had insulted her to such a degree that she became infuriated, and a fight had ensued. Naturally, Jackie had no idea during any of their earlier interactions that he'd had even the intent to apologize. "Look, Steven, I'm only here to meet up with Donna, Fez, and Eric to go to the movies. If you want, I can go upstairs."

He paused, and stumbled around, "Wait. Don't go. What I wanted to say is . . . I . . . I hated you this year."

Jackie glared at him. "Fine," she said. "I'll leave." Jackie was about to get up, but before she did, he continued, "Wait. I mean I thought I did. I thought I hated you." There was a very long pause. Then, he said, ". . . and I'm sorry. Jackie, I'm really sorry. I've done things, and I've said things, and . . . I'm sorry."

Jackie looked at him, trying to take in what he was saying. "Steven, I don't know what to say. I'm . . . I don't believe you. I mean what do you want me to say?"

"Nothing," he said for the first time in a long time without resentment. He exited the basement quietly. Jackie contemplated their brief conversation, thinking, "What was that about?" She was taken aback that he actually appeared to be remorseful. Before too long, the others joined her and they all left for the movie. But, she remained distracted throughout the evening, reflecting. She was relieved when Fez took her home. She gave him a quick kiss goodnight, and continued to be baffled by Hyde's uncharacteristic behavior.


	28. Chapter 28 Some Advice

Part IV, Chapter 28

Some Advice

Hyde picked up Kelso, and the two of them drove to meet their friends at a nearby club to listen to Randy's band perform. Like Jackie when she was at the movies, Hyde did not pay attention to the evening's entertainment, but had his mind occupied with other things. He thought about the conversation he'd had with her right before he left. It had gone about how he'd expected it to. He also thought about the talk he'd had with W.B. when he'd spent the night in Milwaukee.

Whenever Hyde and his friends stayed over for a night in Milwaukee, they stayed at W.B.'s spacious, contemporary-styled house. That last time Hyde and Eric were in Milwaukee, Hyde was alone with W.B., Eric having slept at his girlfriend Mandy's apartment and W.B.'s live-in girlfriend Deirdre still in Japan on business. Before going to sleep, Hyde and W.B. had coffee in the living room, and talked.

"That month when you disappeared to Vegas we were all really worried." Hyde nodded and looked at the carpet. He still felt bad about this. W.B. went on, "I'm not trying to make you feel guilty. That's Kitty Forman's job. I'm just kidding. I'm your father. It's my job too to make you feel guilty. Anyways, you've had a tumultuous year."

Hyde had to agree. "It's been pretty crappy," he said.

W.B. said, "When we were at dinner with Eric, I was only partly joking when I said that thing about your moustache. It's good to see you start looking like, and acting like, yourself again." Hyde looked at W.B., who went on, "You know, son, when people lose something, or someone, important to them, like you lost your girlfriend, it's natural to go through a character change for a while. We all do things that are stupid or that we wouldn't have done normally. Now, I'm not saying you hit rock bottom. You've done a great job at the store. That's one of the reasons I gave it to you." Hyde thanked him. W.B. continued with what he was saying, "But, it's been a year, Steven, and I want you to be happy. As I'm sure you already know, Kitty Forman and I talk about you on the phone."

Hyde grimaced. "Oh my God," he said.

"And Kitty tells me that you've been drinking too much and fighting a lot with Jackie. Well, what I want to tell you is that you don't want to waste any more of your time. You don't get it back. I think it's time to put this behind you. I asked you about Jackie because I think you still love her. We all thought that you two were going to get married, eventually." Hyde stayed silent, listening to W.B., who paused to make sure he got his words right. "Well, if you do still love her, you should be with her."

Hyde started, "I don't . . . It's complicated."

W.B. said, "It always is. But, it's only been a year, a rough year, to be sure, but just a year, and I know a lot of couples who have come through much worse. You're young, and one bad year doesn't have to set the course for the rest of your life."

"Yeah, but . . ." Hyde said.

"What?" W.B. said. "She's with your friend? Now, I like Fez. He's a great guy, but I find it hard to believe that Jackie, or any normal woman, would seriously want to be with him."

Hyde considered W.B.'s advice without commenting. And W.B. said, "Look, maybe it is too complicated, or too much has happened for either of you to want to be together again. If it is, then, maybe it's time to find someone new, and not someone crazy who follows you home from Las Vegas, but someone you could really love."

"Thanks, W.B.," Hyde said. He knew that he was lucky to have people in his life like W.B., and Red, and Mrs. Forman, who cared about him, and took a personal interest in his life.

"Don't worry. You'll know what to do," W.B. said. He couldn't help adding, in his best Obi Wan Kenobi impression, "Trust your feelings, Steven."

Hyde pretended to wince. "Oh, God. Not you too,"

"Sorry. I'm just fooling around. I saw a private screening of "The Empire Strikes Back" the other night. It's coming out next month."

"Well, don't say anything about it to Forman. He'll start frothing at the mouth. He may even have an aneurism." Hyde said.

W.B. chuckled. "Yeah, that Eric's a strange one."

Hyde did think a lot about W.B.'s advice, and believed that it made sense. And, he did start to behave like his old self again, which made him feel good. He decided to follow another part of W.B.'s advice, which was to move out of the Formans' basement and into his own apartment. So, he leased the floor above Grooves, and had it redesigned into an apartment. It was ready enough for him to move into it a week after he had told Jackie that he was sorry.

He saw her in passing a couple of times before he moved. His behavior no longer hostile, Jackie treated him with greater warmth. There had been a détente between the two of them.

"Hey," he said to her on the day he was graduating from the basement. She was seated on the couch, flipping through a magazine. The television was turned on. "I got something for you." He handed her an envelope. "A peace offering." In the envelope were two tickets to the Elton John concert in Chicago. "I thought you and Fez could go. I know how much you guys like him. And, Kiki Dee's going to be there." Fez and Jackie did love Elton John, and had sung along to "Don't Go Breaking My Heart" hundreds of times in the basement, with Jackie as Kiki Dee, and Fez, wearing large sparkly sunglasses, doing Elton.

Jackie said, "Thank you, Steven. I don't know what to say." One thing that she'd always loved about him was that he would give very personal gifts with emotional meaning. She said, "Thank you. That's really sweet of you."

Jackie then noticed his green duffle bag leaning against the backdoor. "Oh," she asked, "are you going on a trip?"

"I thought you knew. I'm moving into my own place," He smiled.

"What?" Jackie said. She looked surprised and a little hurt. "No, no one told me anything." She felt annoyed that Fez, who couldn't keep a secret about anything usually, hadn't told her this. "Does Donna know?" she asked. Donna was home for the weekend. Jackie didn't know why Donna hadn't said anything either.

"I'm not moving that far. Just to Grooves. My place is above the store. And, I'm 99 percent sure that Mrs. Forman is throwing me a surprise house-warming party there next Friday night, after she's done decorating. Not my idea. But, anyways you should have Fez bring you over sometime, or at least come to the party," he said. Jackie was quiet, and felt too confused to know what she thought.

They looked at each other, neither of them saying anything, until it began to feel uncomfortable. "Well," he said with a small smile. "Goodbye." He stepped towards her, and cupped her face in his hands. He then placed a light kiss on her forehead. "Don't break any more hearts," he said as he left the basement quietly.


	29. Chapter 29 A Confused Reaction

Moving On, Part IV, Chapter 29 "A Confused Reaction"

A/N: I revised this chapter. I was in a rush to get it written before I got busy with real life. The characters and the plot are going in the same direction, but I didn't like my writing, and so I tried to (and hopefully did) improve it. I'm redoing the next two chapters as well. More or less, the same things are going to happen, but I want the writing to be consistent with the earlier chapters. I hope people are still reading. I think I'm going to have to write shorter chapters to post more frequently, and keep up with the flow. So, please hang in there, and please review if you're still reading.

Jackie sat back down on the couch right after Hyde left, taken aback. She didn't have time to reflect, because Donna and Fez soon came down into the basement. Donna went to the freezer, and asked her if she wanted a Popsicle, and Fez sat close to her on the couch.

"Why didn't you guys tell me that Steven was moving out?" Jackie asked.

Donna said, "I don't know. I figured Fez told you. What do you care anyways?"

"Yeah, you two fight all the time." Fez paused before he said, "I have been spending my time thinking about how to please you. In the bedroom. If you know what I mean."

While sometimes it made her laugh when Fez would say silly things like this about his non-existent sexual prowess, right now she found it annoying.

Sensing that she was bothered, Fez began to stroke her hair. "Jackie, don't worry about Hyde. You two need a break from each other."

"Fez is right. You guys can't be in the same room for more than five minutes before one of you lays into the other. And, usually it's Hyde who's attacking you," Donna said. "I figured that he would stop after you and Fez hooked up with each other. I think it's healthy that he's moving out of the Formans, and putting some distance between you."

"Yeah," Jackie nodded slowly. "Maybe, you're right." She still looked sad. "But it's kind of been different since we all got back from Chicago. He's actually been acting civil, like an actual human being, with feelings, manners and everything."

Responding to Donna's expression, particularly to the way Donna had raised her eyebrows in skepticism, Jackie added, "Don't get me wrong. Steven's still Steven, but I mean . . . He sat down and apologized to me last week. He even gave me this on his way out." She held up the envelope. "Oh, they're tickets for you and me, Fez, to go see Elton John next month in Chicago."

"Omigod! I am so excited! You have no idea, my tiny dancer."

Jackie purposely refrained from revealing anything specific from her exchange with Steven. Nor did she mention what Steven had said to her, or the sweet, wistful way he gave her that little kiss on the forehead before he told her good-bye and left the basement. She held back, not so much because she wanted to protect Fez's feelings. Rather, she wanted to keep Steven's good-bye private. It was to be for her alone.

Fez brought her back from her musings when he took her hand in his, and gave it a kiss, as if to say that she was now his princess. He said, "You look really beautiful today, Jackie. I don't want to see you sad anymore. May I propose to take you out for a romantic lunch of hamburgers and French fries at the Hub, milady?" She looked at him and smiled, recognizing that Fez could be quite charming sometimes.

Fez extended the invitation for lunch to Donna. "Oh, and you can come too."

"And, tonight, I propose we go roller-discoing in Kenosha. And, Donna, I regret to inform you are uninvited to this part of the date. Jackie and I will probably be making out, and we must have privacy, so we can really get funky."

Jackie made the slightest grimace. Neither Fez nor Donna noticed, because Donna was rolling her eyes when she told him that, although she would love to go to the roller rink that night, she couldn't. She and Eric would be helping Hyde with his move.

Fez turned to look at Jackie. "What do you say?"

"I guess it's a date," was her reply.

They left the basement with Fez looking up towards the ceiling. His arms were open in prayer. Partially joking, partially serious, he said, "You are a benevolent and magnificent God to let me have Jackie Burkhart for my girlfriend at last."


	30. Chapter 30 Lunch at the Hub

Moving On, Part IV

Chapter 30, Lunch at the Hub

As it turned out, Jackie did not go to Kenosha with Fez. She just couldn't muster the energy or the enthusiasm to go dancing or roller-skating. Fez went with Michael instead. Fez didn't seem to be disappointed when she told him that she had a headache and didn't want to go out. Fez was never disappointed when she would tell him that she wanted to go home early, or that she wanted to stay in by herself. And, on her part, just as often as she felt excited about being taken out by Fez, she was equally satisfied to spend the evening at home, alone. She figured that she ought to feel bothered by this realization, but she was preoccupied thinking about Steven, and what he had said to her.

At the Hub with Fez and Donna, Jackie hoped that Steven and Eric would drop for lunch. They didn't. Instead, Michael popped in. He filled everyone in on the latest developments. The whole space above Grooves was being converted into an apartment. And, W.B. was paying for everything, and doing everything.

"All Hyde is doing is walking around the place and scowling. His place is going to be freakin' awesome. It'll be a total babe magnet. I told Hyde that he better be prepared to stay downstairs a lot, because I'm going to be in there doing it. A lot. A lot, a lot," Kelso said.

"Let's see your arm, Kelso. Where Hyde punched you," said Donna.

"This one's going to leave a bruise." Kelso rubbed his arm. "Man, Hyde really needs to learn how to share."

Jackie said. "I can't really see Steven working with a decorator. He's got bad taste. He's poor. Or, was poor, anyways."

""was' being the operative word. Hyde really did hit the orphan jackpot," said Donna.

"I know. W.B. pays for everything. He gave Hyde the record store. I keep telling Hyde how lucky he is. He's getting a free ride, and he's not even that sweet-looking, like me," said Kelso.

"Kelso," Fez chimed in, "While it is true that Hyde may not possess your magnificent beauty, he does have charisma and animal magnetism. Hyde is very sexy."

It was at this point that Jackie faked a migraine so that she could leave. She wondered what she was doing with Fez. And, why was Steven so successful now that the two of them were no longer together? Steven was the least materialistic, least ambitious person she knew, and ironically, made the most money and had the most demanding job.

Instead of going home straight away as she had planned, Jackie went to the Formans. She told herself that she was just going to stop by for a sweater that she had misplaced. While Jackie didn't find her sweater, she managed to get invited to dinner. Mrs. Forman said that Steven and Eric ought to be by soon with Donna. Jackie was glad to have a reason to be there. She felt confused by what Steven had meant earlier in the day, and wanted to talk to him about it.


	31. Chapter 31 A Teaser

Moving On, Part IV

Chapter 31, "A Teaser for What Happens Next"

A/N: I don't know if this is allowed but I wanted to let whoever might still be reading and are checking that Chapter 29 has been revised. Please reread. I think it is better. I'm working on Chapter 30, so check back sometime next week. Hopefully, it'll be done by the weekend. More chapters will be added before the events of this one occur, but I was hoping to get some people hooked, and encourage them to go back and read the revisions. Anyways, here's a teaser of what's to come.

Hyde woke up, his sleep interrupted by someone who was insistently knocking on the front door.

It was probably Fez. Again. Fez had come over practically every night over the past two weeks, after he had left Jackie's. Bursting with excitement or tears, Fez could barely contain himself. He was always desperate to share the latest development of his intimate life with Jackie.

Tonight, though, was different.

"Fez," he called out while walking to the front door, "get out of here before I kick your ass."

"It's not Fez, Steven, it's me. Open up. It's freezing out here." Jackie walked in briskly peering around the apartment. "Are you by yourself?"

When she saw his nod, she went on, "Fez and I broke up."


	32. Chapter 32 Feelings Change

Moving On, Part IV, Chapter 32, Feelings Change

Several weeks before that night when Jackie showed up on Hyde's doorstep, Jackie began to think about the past year, and everything that had happened. Slowly, she put her own feelings of disappointment, heartbreak, and anger aside. And, she considered everything from another perspective, that of Hyde. This process of reflection may have been sparked by Steven's stumbling words of apology and terse goodbye, but her thoughts really started flowing after she talked with Kitty Forman.

On the day that Steven moved out, she waited for him to come back to the Formans with Donna and Eric for dinner. It was important to her that she talk with Steven, and get him to clarify what he had meant earlier in the day. But, he didn't come for dinner, and neither did Eric and Donna. She waited a couple of hours until right before Kitty was about to serve dinner. Eric called and told a peeved Kitty that the three of them were still busy and had decided to order a pizza. Jackie wasn't invited.

Jackie still had dinner with Mr. and Mrs. Forman. She had been raised to have good manners. Afterwards, she and Mrs. Forman were washing up the dishes, when Jackie asked Mrs. Forman about something Kitty had said to Donna and her earlier that year when Fez was dating Kitty's friend Marsha.

"Mrs. Forman, what did you mean when you said that Donna and I had been passed around like baseball bats?"

"I'm sorry, Jackie, sweetie, but I'm not sure I remember saying that."

"Mrs. Forman, it was when we were drinking margaritas, and you asked me and Donna, why either one of us doesn't start dating Fez. Then, you said that we both had been passed around like baseball bats. But, I don't think you meant that for Donna. I think you were only talking about me."

"Jackie, you can't take anything I say when I'm drunk seriously. I don't even remember half the things I say. And, I'm sure I said it to Donna. She was dating Randy."

"No, Mrs. Forman. It was before Donna and Randy started going out. And, you did mean it about both of us."

"Okay, Jackie, look. When you first moved away, and Steven disappeared for that month. Even for awhile after he came back, I was really angry at you. I mean, I thought that you too were going to get married. And I thought of you as my daughter-in-law, the same way, I looked at Donna. And then everything happened with you and Michael. Well, you broke poor Steven's heart."

"Mrs. Forman, I didn't mean for any of that to . . ."

"I know but it did. And, I guess I just felt the way any mother would. But I got over being angry. And you know I think you're such a doll. Sweetie, will you hand me that towel? Anyways, you're with Fez now, and I think you make a cute couple, and thankfully, Steven's free of that whore."


	33. Chapter 33 No Closure

Moving On, Part IV

Chapter 33, No Closure

A/N: Sorry – the teaser is not a tease – Jackie will show up on Steven's doorstep, but first she has to go through a few things to see him in a different light. Not too many things but a few. Hopefully, that will make it more romantic when she does show up.

On her way home Jackie thought about Mrs. Forman and their little talk. Jackie was happy to hear Kitty refer to Sam by the same epithet that she, herself, always used whenever Sam's name came up in conversation or in her private thoughts. "Whore." Sam was a Whore, and Jackie liked that she wasn't the only one who thought so. Michael and Fez sometimes called Sam a "whore," but they meant it in a positive way.

Before she and Fez were a couple, before Sam had disappeared, Fez would often say something like, "That Hyde is so lucky. He gets to do it with that _whore_ every night. And often in the day." Fez would then wag his eyebrows and smile perversely, "I know. Several times I watched." Jackie would shoot daggers him with her eyes. Walking home now, Jackie wondered, "What am I doing with Fez?"

Like Fez, when Michael referred to Sam as a whore, he meant it as a compliment. He would typically gloat, "I'd nail Hyde's wife. Strippers are like the ultimate _whores_. I would definitely do her if I knew Hyde wouldn't kill me. I mean . . . I can't take away all his women. Huh, Jackie?" Jackie would roll her eyes, call Michael an idiot, and go upstairs. Michael was always very careful not to say anything like this in front of Hyde, or Sam. Everyone thought that Hyde might actually have killed Kelso if he had overheard him. More realistically, he probably would have broken Kelso's nose, and maybe a rib or two. And, Sam would have told Hyde. Jackie would always remind them that Sam would not have been able to keep her big, fat stupid stripper/whore mouth closed. It bothered . . . actually it hurt Jackie that Michael feared Steven's reaction to his dirty talk about Sam to such a degree that he was careful about what he said in front of him. Michael had never shown any restraint in front of Steven when he joked around about his earlier sex life with Jackie. He knew that at most Steven would punch his arm, giving him a bruise. At the time, she had interpreted Michael's behavior as awareness that Steven felt more passionately about Sam than he had about her.

During the four and a half months that Sam had been there, Jackie intensely hated it every time that someone mentioned that Whore's name. She was never able to prevent images of Steven and Sam cavorting like animals, screwing each other senseless, from invading her mind. These thoughts disgusted and pained her.

And, Steven was the worst of them. There was not a day that went by during that time when he wouldn't say something about the benefit of having a stripper for a wife. Generally, he would follow the comment by putting Jackie down, contrasting how much better it was to be married to a stripper than it would have been to be married to her. She remembered complaining to Donna about what a pig Steven was to her after that fair when they were all looking for Mrs. Forman's ring. Donna had told her about Steven calling her a bitch and then saying how it had taken being married to a stripper to make him realize this.

Steven had been despicable. In his spite, he had chosen to hit Jackie again and again in her most vulnerable spots. One of these was her failure to get Steven to marry her. He knew how much she had wanted to be married, and to be married to him. When Sam had been around and everyone had thought that Steven's marriage to her was real, Steven was always throwing Sam in Jackie's face. He had no qualms about kissing or holding Sam in front of her, or having her sit on his lap when the group was sitting together in the basement. Jackie remembered all those times that she had been present when he and Sam had gone into his, or "their," room. Steven had been openly expressive about what they were going to do there. He had shown no sensitivity to Jackie's feelings. He had shown no respect to the length or depth of his relationship with her. He had shown a complete lack of boundaries about his and Sam's sexual life. The intent of his words and his actions, explicitly stated and implied, had been that Jackie was hateful, that he was lucky to have freed himself from her trap, and that, Jackie was so shrill, so bitchy, that he preferred being with a stranger, a lowly stripper, to being with her. Steven had convinced Jackie that his earlier refusal to commit to a future with her had nothing to do with not being ready to get married. He just hadn't wanted to be married to her. It had seemed to her at the time that Steven had taken equal pleasure by contemptuously rubbing in her face how she had absolutely nothing positive going on in her life, no boyfriend and no job. Jackie had felt beaten down by Steven. She had felt victimized.

One of the reasons that Jackie had been taken aback when Hyde apologized to her was that he had been so malicious. She had at first doubted the sincerity of his remorse because it was such a complete turnaround from his earlier hostility. It had never occurred to Jackie that Steven might have had other underlying feelings until he kissed her so sadly before he left that morning. She really wanted to know what he had meant. From the moment Sam walked in wearing that cheap pink tube top, Jackie had stopped considering what Steven's feelings had been before or were now. It took Mrs. Forman saying that she had been angry with Jackie, that Jackie had broken Steven's heart to make Jackie really start to think. Jackie realized that she and Steven had never finished their conversation about what had happened in Chicago. She wanted to talk to him about that and about everything that had happened since then. She needed to get some perspective on the whole disaster that ended their relationship. She needed to have closure. And, she was hopeful that the two of them might be able to work things through and become friends again. She realized that, since the baptism, he was starting to act like his old self. She realized how much she had missed him. And, it seemed that he had missed her too.


	34. Chapter 34 Dectective Work

Moving On, Part IV

Chapter 34, "Half Agony, Half Hope"

Several weeks went by before Jackie was able to corner Hyde and get him to talk to her. By the time they did sit down together, Jackie had come to suspect that Steven's callousness, his nastiness, his coldness, all came from jealousy and from having been deeply hurt by her.

She noticed right away that he was avoiding her. He practically ran out of the Forman house every time she arrived. The same thing would happen at the Hub. As soon as she came in and sat down to join the group, he'd stay for a few minutes and take off. If she happened to be there before he came in, he'd stop by briefly to say hello, and take his food to go. A few times when their paths crossed, she briefly caught him giving her a furtive look before he retreated behind his mask. She knew him so well, and began to suspect that something was stirring inside him. Whatever door had been slammed shut in Chicago seemed to be inching its way back open.

She asked Donna, then Fez, Mrs. Forman, and even Mr. Forman if they knew anything about what Steven had done or gone through in Chicago. Donna hadn't really given it any thought, which wasn't surprising, given that Donna had been fairly self-involved that year. Ironically, Jackie's character was fixed in the minds of all their friends as the one in the group that was self-centered. When Jackie asked Fez, he made jokes about it and re-stated the obvious. After she pinched him a few times, Fez stopped with the stripper jokes, and confided that he had been very worried about Hyde at the time. Hyde had never disappeared like that before. Fez didn't know anything more, because Hyde was the last person to confide in anyone.

Mr. Forman cut Jackie off before she had a chance to question him. "No, no, no. This is Kitty's area of expertise." He directed her to Mrs. Forman. Mrs. Forman didn't know any more than Fez did, but she confided to Jackie that she was pretty sure that Steven had spent his time in Las Vegas trying to pull himself together. "Of course," Mrs. Forman added, "while he was there, he also happened to make the biggest mistake of his life."

Jackie even tried approaching Eric, but realized that she wouldn't get any answers from him. She and Eric had never been good friends, and he was Steven's best friend, anyhow. He might have the answers she wanted, but getting them out of him would be probably more difficult than pulling them from Steven.

As it turned out, it was Michael who was able to fill in some of the missing pieces. He had gotten his information from Sam. Even though Michael wouldn't have dared to make a move on Sam, he did like to hang around the basement when she was there and watch her try on her costumes. There were a lot of times when he hung out and watched TV. with her when Hyde was at work. Michael told Jackie that Hyde had been devastated when he found the two of them together in her hotel room. Hyde had gone there that night to propose to her.

"Wait," Jackie stopped him, "did Sam tell you that Steven actually had gone to see me to propose? Did Steven tell her that?"

"Yeah," Michael squealed. "Hyde told her all about it when they met. I mean he was totally wasted, and she said that she didn't think he remembered talking about it, but he bought you a ring and everything."

"What?" Jackie's mouth flew open, and she had a sick feeling in her stomach. She had been so close to getting what she had wanted so badly, only to have everything blow apart. And she felt guilty. She could imagine how Steven had felt, given how scared he was to allow himself to fall in love at all.

The next time she saw Hyde, she was prepared. She didn't take any chances. She spied on him from her car, and saw him lock up the store and get into his truck. She beat him over to the Forman's house, taking care to park around the block so that he wouldn't see her car. She waited for him in the den. He came through the front door. She stepped out, startling, even alarming, him.

"Steven," she said, "we need to talk."

Not surprisingly, he tried to get away.

"Please," she asked.

The two of them sat down in the den where they would have some privacy.

I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own, than when you almost broke it eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant... For you alone I think and plan. –Have you not seen this? Can you fail to have understood my wishes?

Jane Austen, _Persuasion_

So, Steven Hyde would never have written her a letter so openly romantic as this passage, but upon reflection after reading it, Jackie knew that Steven's feelings were for her were the same as the heroine's fictional lover.


End file.
